Movie Madness: Scream 6, or whatever (2022)
(Available on Paramount+)
Note: Ted the Rat said not to watch this. Ted the Rat refused to watch this — he put his little paw down on this one. I should have listened to Ted. Ted was right.
I remember when the original Scream came out. It was scary – that opening scene, although violent, really set the mood and all, and the movie itself was kind of different. And of course, much was made about how “meta” it all was, with the explanations of how to survive a horror movie, etc. This one is even more gory (am I getting old or is that just unnecessary?), and there is that obligatory scene that has to be in every one of them, of someone explaining what kind of horror movie this is (a “reboot”? A “requel”? I don’t remember – quite frankly I immediately forgot all the “rules” and didn’t connect them to what happened in the movie, anyway.)
I faintly remember the last movie (not sure why I watched that one either), which involved the daughter of one of the killers from the very first movie (the killer was Billy Loomis and this chick’s name is Sam, like Sam Loomis from the original Halloween and even Psycho? Yes, screenwriters, you are very clever. Also, I guess I am getting old because I saw the first one in the theatre and I was of reproducing age then, so I could be old enough to have Sam as a daughter….ugh…..let’s just stop right there), and she’s trying to help her half-sister (Tara) through some new Scream-like happenings in town. Throughout that last movie, if I remember correctly, Sam keeps having hallucinations of her dead father Billy, who of course keeps telling her to go out and kill people and do other heinous things, like commit mail fraud and litter, and maybe even ring people’s doorbells and then run.
In this sequel, the survivors from the last one move to New York City. Tara and Sam are sharing an apartment while Tara is in school. They mention that Sam has two jobs, and they have a roommate, Quinn (whose father is a cop). Huh. That still would probably not be enough money to rent an apartment in NYC and still be able to eat. But I digress.
The survivors all look out for each other and such, blah, blah. Besides Tara and Sam, there is a brother and sister too. Was there another survivor in this one? I don’t remember. There are also a few other obligatory characters thrown in there to try to make us guess who the killer could be and for the killer to kill off.
There is also Kirby from the fourth one – Kirby, right? The blonde? The fourth one, right? I don’t know. We all thought she was dead (I know that’s all I’ve been thinking about for the last 20 years), but she’s not, and now she’s an FBI agent. And Gail Weathers has some fancy apartment in New York City, too, but apparently all of that money she pays in rent doesn’t go toward security for the building, because anyone wearing a creepy mask can just waltz right up to anyone’s apartment whenever they want.
And there are “Ghost Face” imitators, and “Ghost Face” masks from the past killings left at new crime scenes. There is an escape from one apartment to another using a ladder connecting one window to another over an alley – who has a ladder in their apartment in NYC? Maybe he was painting his apartment? Maybe he is some kind of a weird ladder collector (a “ladder enthusiast,” if you will)? And there is a Ghost Face Museum of sorts in an old abandoned movie theater (again, who can afford all of this stuff in NYC? I bet old abandoned movie theaters right in the middle of the city ain’t cheap!).
And there is a really, really stupid and unbelievable ending. People are stabbed and survive when they probably shouldn’t. I mean, they really get stabbed pretty good and pretty deep, and there’s a lot of blood. We are told people have survived in an off-handed, oh-by-the-way fashion, which seems like a cop-out just so they can bring these characters back YET AGAIN in the next one, but they weren’t sure until the very end of production if they wanted to kill them off or not, so they just threw that in.
There is also an unbelievable part where a dead body or a dummy or something is used to replace someone who seems to have gotten killed, which somehow works to fool everyone. Maybe I am not remembering that right because that can’t be, right? I mean, I don’t think any villains on Scooby-Doo ever even tried that one.
There is also a psychologist who doesn’t seem to really understand what a psychologist is supposed to do or how he is supposed to behave or what his job is, but he is still better than any psychologist I have ever had and he gets what’s coming to him, I guess.
Sigh…what else? Oh, yeah, I know. Why??? Why??? Why? And yet, I am sure Scream 7 is in the works as I write this. Sigh.
