PREMISE
In the next installment, the survivors of the Ghostface killings leave Woodsboro behind and start a fresh chapter in New York City.
THE GOOD STUFF
Jenna Ortega and Melissa Barrera– Somehow, these two have risen above this putrid material with solid performances that defy logic. Barrera especially is making chicken salad out of chickens*** muscling her way through scene after scene of the same emotional beats that start from the movie’s beginning until the end. She’s been playing the same three emotions for two straight movies, and somehow she comes through smelling like roses in this chapter.
Ortega deserves endless props for actually being given a lot more to do in this film. Sure, her character is by far the least intelligent in the whole film, which constitutes scene after scene of absolutely illogical and comedically B-level horror movie decision-making… But she’s good. She’s good enough to muscle her way through it as well. God bless these ladies. Truly.
THE BAD STUFF
MINDY MARTIN- I wrote about this character at length in my review for the last film, and nearly everything still stands. The character has not changed at all and is by far the most annoying character in a movie filled with annoying characters.
Jasmine’s Savoy Brown is outstanding in YELLOWJACKETS. That’s important to note because I have absolutely zero positive things to say about anything else from this point forward.
SIDNEY’S ABSENCE- It’s not a spoiler whatsoever to mention that Sidney Prescott is not in this film. But one must point out how ridiculous that is at a base level. No matter what Neve Campbell was given to do in the last three chapters of this story, her presence was practically necessary. The fact that she would be an indispensable trophy kill of whoever put on the Ghostface mask now and forever more absolutely makes sense, no matter what the ulterior motives are of whoever puts on the Ghostface.
It’s humorous hearing the fans of this franchise trying to justify why Gale is here, and Sidney is not. Ya’ll are hilarious.
Speaking of Gale….
THE UGLY STUFF
GALE WEATHERS- Of all of the OG screen characters that we’ve seen come and go throughout all of these sequels, Gale is the one that hasn’t changed a singular bit since the first movie. It’s not a spoiler to say that Hayden Panettiere does show up in this film. The things that her character has gone through since the fourth screen movie are mentioned in pieces throughout, and even she has had more character development as of this point than Gale. Courtney Cox exists in this movie to repeat damn near the exact same beats, so she’s been repeating them for the last five chapters of this story. Dewey, her ex-husband of 10 years died in the last film…
(It’s been a year. If you’re reading this review without having seen the last movie and I spoiled that for you, that’s your fault at this point).
….and this f****** movie tells you on more than one occasion that this story literally takes place a year after the last film took place. One would think that all these things would create a new angle for Courtney Cox to play. But sadly, no. So she is just there for….what exactly?
DERMOT MULRONEY- What in the total f*** was this performance? I’m baffled that he was this overwhelmingly cheesy and terrible. Mulroney is overdoing it to such a comedically bad extent that the audience I saw this movie with was flat-out cracking up with every line he spoke toward the last 30 minutes of the film.
His expressions are so cartoonish, his dialogue is so bad, and even in the scenes where he’s supposed to be dramatic, his delivery almost directly implies that he’s doing this for a check. Mulroney is usually a pretty reliable character actor and has been for almost 40 years. Watch My Best Friend’s wedding, the trigger effect, or Young guns to see him doing good work.
Absolute f****** imperviousness
You know, I find myself being a vocal advocate of The fast and furious franchise. And I get a lot of flack for that because of the lack of realism that exists in that franchise right now. It’s the main complaint of any particular detractor of that franchise. It’s exhausting to have to deal with.
Why do I mention that? Because you same people who chastise that franchise for lack of realism will watch something like this and tell me to turn my brain off when I see MULTIPLE CHARACTERS get stabbed in the stomach with a large blade 10 to 15 times a piece only to have them stand back up and walk. At some point in this film, a character gets stabbed in the mouth with a large blade then the blade twists inside that character’s mouth only for them to then stand backup chase another character, and he even can speak coherently. A character is stabbed at least 15 times all over their body all at once towards the end of the film, left alone in an enclosed space for about 20 minutes, and it doesn’t mean s***. A character is stabbed 10 to 15 times in two different scenes, and it doesn’t matter. In this franchise, knifing somebody in the stomach or chest is as ineffective as a slap to the face.
GHOSTFACE- However, no character in this film is as impervious to physical damage as Ghostface. They take so much blunt force trauma and knife impalings that I walked out of the theater looking up Wikipedia to see if putting on the Ghostface uniform gave you f****** superpowers. (It supposedly doesn’t).
At some point, Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees became out-and-out sub-human monster figures to carry out the rest of their franchises, and we might as well do that with Ghostface. There’s nothing but superhuman Ghostface activity occurring now in the scream movies, and we should f****** acknowledge it. Hell, I even think he flat-out dodges a shotgun blast at point-blank range in this film.
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Look, it’s not enough for me to go as far as to say that this franchise shouldn’t continue. There are horror franchises that are far worse than this one and have just as many sequels. There will be at least 15 more of these scream movies spread out over the next 65 years. And I’m trying not to be the “back in my day” guy when it comes to referencing franchises that started when I was a teenager.
But at the same time… Do better horror fans.
A lot of you salty jabronis came after me on Twitter last year for criticizing that abysmal last Scream movie as if I was insulting your childhood. Perhaps I was. But maybe I was doing you a favor. Maybe you need to realize that your childhood was, in fact, trash if you’re going to put the cape on for this tired, regurgitated, unexciting, not scary, horribly written, and, yes intelligence insulting franchise.
Just do better. Love yourselves more. That’s all I ask.Â
SCREAM 6 is in theaters now.
