'Scream VI' Set to Slay Competition at the Box Office This Weekend

When it comes to the Scream franchise, you always know what you're going to get: lots of self-referential jokes and murder played for laughs. This week, the latest installment in the horror franchise, Scream 6, will dish up the reliable formula that moviegoers continue to love, and that's almost certainly a recipe for getting to the top of the box-office charts. Read on for details.

Via The Seattle Times.

Just as was the case with many of its predecessors, “Scream VI” has legacy on its mind. Though it has left behind the fictional town of Woodsboro, California, to take its scares and self-referential snark to New York City, the history of the franchise continues to haunt the characters as much as it does the film. It can buckle under this weight, frequently feeling as if it is falling prey to some of the same narrative trappings it seeks to skewer, yet still finds a way to carry on. Like the iconic Ghostface first introduced by the late, great horror auteur Wes Craven in his original 1996 masterwork, which remains the pinnacle of the series after all these years, these films just won’t die. Thankfully, this latest shows there is still proper fun to be had even as it can’t fully transcend some tiresome tropes.

Identified within the film itself as a sequel to the requel that was last year’s “Scream,” which had no business being as good as it was, the story picks up with sisters Sam (Melissa Barrera) and Tara (Jenna Ortega) trying to start fresh. Everything seems tentatively peaceful as the former is going to much-needed therapy and the latter is in college. However, this fragile tranquillity is shattered when another murderous Ghostface begins brutally killing once more.

Following a strong cold open that uses our familiarity of past entries to wrong-foot us in silly yet sinister fashion, Sam and Tara must set out to figure out who is behind it all. They will have help from the other returning duo of siblings, Jasmin Savoy Brown’s Mindy and Mason Gooding’s Chad, while getting to know new characters who could all be the killer. There is also Courteney Cox returning as the self-serving reporter Gale Weathers who has written a book giving credence to online conspiracies that it was Sam who was behind the killings in the last film.

This often plays out like a run-of-the-mill “Scream” movie with death and deception looming around every corner. What elevates it is the way all of this is executed. Standout sequences are uniquely tense as Ghostface is more ruthless than ever, cutting through absolutely everything and everyone to get to the next target to rip them apart, too. Be it when characters hide out in a bodega, dangle on a ladder between two apartments or cram on the subway with masked Ghostfaces everywhere, this is where the film shines brightest. It is consistently more gruesome than any of the previous films, but not in a way that feels like it is going bigger for the sake of getting butts in seats, as Mindy says.

Get the rest of the story at The Seattle TImes.