Film Review - Scream 6 (2023)

Scream 6 is the sixth film in the series and the first without Neve Campbell as Sidney Prescott and this time the setting is New York City where Tara and Sam Carpenter (Jenna Ortega and Melissa Barrera) are now living but Ghostface is also in town and he’s ready to take Manhattan one stabbing kill at a time to get to the Carpenter sisters and their friends (Jack Champion, Jasmin Savoy-Brown and Mason Gooding) but they’ll have help from Gale Weathers (Courtney Cox) and Kirby Reed (Hayden Panettiere)

Scream 6 was good fun and I had a good time watching it in the cinema and part of that firstly was the NYC setting, it was nice to get out of Woodsboro for once and shift the setting to somewhere else and the film does a good job extracting some horror tension from this especially with one scene on a crowded Subway train where people are wearing masks and its hard to know who Ghostface really is and the horror kills are fun as well especially one in the beginning of the film with a nice cameo appearance.

As for the main cast they are a good group for the most part, Ortega and Barrera make up for the absence of Campbell well and I didn’t miss her anywhere near as much as I thought I would and watching Barrera here as well as in In the Heights back in 2021 made me wish all the more that she was Princess Jasmine in the live action Aladdin because she looks like a proper live action Jasmine where Naomi Scott (who I do like) did not.

I couldn’t recognise Jack Champion recently seen as Spider in Avatar: The Way of Water as he looks so different here which shouldn’t be a surprise as he shot his Avatar scenes when he was younger and smaller, as for Savoy-Brown, Gooding and Cox they are good as well but my favourite of the cast outside of the Carpenter sisters was Hayden Panettiere’s Kirby who we first met in 2011’s Scream 4 she is clearly having a great time being back in this series and that shows on screen.

And so that was Scream 6 and I had fun with it even if I preferred other Horror films like Smile, The Black Phone and Malignant, 3 out of 5.