Scream 5, Scream 6 - My Take (Spoilers)

 

Another late set of reviews but because of the new one I figured I could get away with it. I reviewed the first four in a previous post and this gets us current with the 2022 and 2023 releases.

I chose to separate them into two posts not for length but because they're different types of movies. Let me explain.

The first four are a contiguous set. They tie back into each other, the stories interweave, they're tight. The next two are the attempt to hand off the franchise to new characters. Notice that word "attempt". I won't say it's a bad thing to do because it can get really stale to have the same things happening with the same characters over and over and over, even if the ghostface killer(s) are never the same people with the same motivations. The victim group is what needs refreshing, especially once they've been thinned out.

Unfortunately this didn't work out well, in my opinion. I have nothing against the characters they created and the main one has a pretty interesting backstory. But it was missing the spark.

In the 5th movie they still had all three of the main characters from the beginning. The directors made a deliberate choice to kill one of them and do it as a perma-kill. This falls back to the "no one is safe" concept but it is still a divisive topic in the fandom today. I was even sad that it happened. I liked that character.

These movies start getting into overkill and sloppiness, which are kind of endemic for the time. The kills weren't just several stabs - they were dozens of stabs. That much stabbity-stabbity all but ensured that the prop knives were more obvious and the ability for people to linger and survive such things was kind of an eye roll time. The sloppiness came when they departed from canon.

They strayed from canon in a couple of ways. One - the ghostface killers didn't always have that direct personal connection to the people they killed. Two - the ghostface killer did things that they hadn't done unmasked in the past. Those may seem like small issues but when you're dealing with an established franchise with fervid fans and you're taking over from a beloved director you gotta walk a fine line. You want to make it yours, you want to pay credit to the original director/creator, and you want to make a good enough movie they let you make more.

Of course this isn't always true *cough cough Batman Forever cough* but in this case I think they did. There's a crapton of Easter Eggs in them that reference Wes Craven, enough that it's kind of overkill in my opinion. I think they would have been better off sticking closer to his core themes than putting in bird pictures on the set because he liked birds.

Again, I get it. Rebooting the franchise with new characters to take the lead and using the legacy ones for continuity and nostalgia. Plus using the legacy characters adds a patina of legitimacy to the newer movies. There were big boots to fill and this is one way to add some padding. Of course killing off one of the legacy characters may seem like it was the wrong thing to do but it was absolutely the right thing to do.

Back to the overkill and sloppiness thing. The kills were much gorier and I think part of that is changing opinions in movie rating boards. It's also part of the meta where the reboot has to be MORE. The sloppiness has to do with things like the ghostface killer getting whapped upside the face with a frying pan and shaking it off, etc. There was a lot of stuff where the violence level was upped but the effects were minimized. It's again a systemic thing but it also makes the restraint of the first four movies more obvious.

The new movie is out. It's why I made myself watch all of these in a short period of time. From the trailers and from what I've heard it seems like they're going to pretend these two movies never happened and go back to the original premises. The trailers promise more of the thriller aspect and I expect there to be some overkill because it's expected. I'll do a review on that one, of course.

As with the first movies I won't be watching these again. It's not that I don't think they're not good because they're still good enough to be entertaining and keep you wondering who the ghostface killers are and why they're doing it. It's for the same reason as the first - when you know the ending to movies like this you need a reason to watch them again. You know the ending so all the tension is gone.