Nobody else seems to see it this way, but I still think SCREAM was the perfect name for the sequel to SCREAM (1996) that came out in 2022. It revived the seemingly concluded series after 11 years, and for the first time without Wes Craven, so naturally it took today’s legacy sequels – where a set of new, younger characters teams up with returning characters from the old series in a story loosely structured like the first film – as its format and subject. The movies it’s based on never have a number in their title; it only made sense to follow the naming convention of such modern horror franchise entries as HALLOWEEN (2018), HELLBOY (2019), THE GRUDGE (2020), CANDYMAN (2021), WRONG TURN (2021), TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE (2022), HELLRAISER (2022) and the upcoming THE EXORCIST (2023).
A year later here we are with another one from the same directors (Tyler Gillett & Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, READY OR NOT) and writers (Guy Busick [READY OR NOT] & James Vanderbilt [ZODIAC]) and this time it does have a number in the title – the historic first Roman numeral of the series. SCREAM VI is a good title mainly because the trailer showed the M in SCREAM get slashed and split into a bleeding VI, and secondarily because it’s admitting that yeah, we can’t lie, this is the sixth movie in the SCREAM series. It stars mostly our new set of characters introduced in the last one, but makes reference to characters and events from all five previous SCREAMs. I gotta admit, I’ve been there since the beginning, I’ve watched SCREAM many times, SCREAM 2 several times, SCREAM 3 maybe three times, the other two one each, but they drop so many names so fast I had trouble remembering what they were talking about. Not that it matters.
(Note: There were two guys behind me and one of them had apparently never seen any SCREAM movie before so the other guy tried to explain who each character was as they appeared. Not ideal.) (read the rest of this shit…)
