Tumbletoppel’s review published on Letterboxd:
NOT A SPOILER REVIEW, READ WITHOUT WORRIES, too cool for Ghostface anyway
I saw the first 2020s Scream here, I saw Billie Eilish Live at the O2 here, and now I’m back seeing Scream VI AND hear when the party’s over in this movie, lucky motherfecker I am. Puerto Rico Premium Outlets you’ll always be famous
Anyways Scream VI. Tara (Jenna Ortega) and her friends Mindy (Jasmin Savoy Brown) and Chad (Mason Gooding) have moved to New York City following the terrible events of last year’s Scream. Tara's older sister, Sam (Melissa Barrera), has tagged along and is putting a crimp in Tara's social life with her over-protectiveness. Nevertheless, they're all sharing a house with some new roommates, Mindy has a new girlfriend, and they're all trying to move on. Unfortunately, the terror of Ghostface isn't finished with them yet, and they start to experience deadly new attacks. Mindy tries to establish the rules this time, while police detective Bailey (Dermot Mulroney) and Kirby Reed from 2011’s part 4 (Hayden Panettiere), who's now with the FBI, discover that the new killer is referencing all of the previous killers. So Tara and her friends must prepare for what they hope will be one final showdown
While this sequel is bogged down by complicated lore and is far more brutal than it is actually scary, the strong characters and an effective mystery come together to make it a cut above. In the last movie, Mindy cleverly proclaimed that they were in a "re-quel," but here her efforts to establish the rules are headache-inducing, but actually well executed. Additionally, perhaps as the result of the number of kills getting ramped up, each one gets the suspense it might have (with the exception of a terrific, extended sequence on the subway). Still, Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett do manage to use their 123 minute running time to more deeply explore the characters and their relationships. We can feel their trauma and their wounds and easily empathize with them. Plus, not only is the mystery in Scream VI satisfying and clever, but it's also a logical extension of the previous movie. There actually was a good reason for another sequel; it's more than just a stab in the dark, but it’s sure as entertaining as hell to see people go at it I guess
