What’s your favorite scary movie?  Is it Halloween? Hereditary maybe? or an even weirder one movie like The Babadook? For many, their answer would be any one of the Five Scream movies, but are their answers changing now that Scream 6 has arrived? 

The Scream franchise has been very up in the air since the release of the fifth movie; It was a really good film and fans enjoyed it, but would the story get stale with an almost 30 year old franchise. Read on for some non-spoiler insight into fans’ concerns about the movie and how I felt about it.

  For those who have been living under a rock for 27 years, or just those not aware of horror, Scream is a slasher franchise originally set in the small town of Woodsboro, California, where tragedy strikes the life of high school student, Sydney Prescot (Neve Campbell). Like a true slasher, there are chase scenes, gore, and a very recognizable killer. 

Unlike a regular slasher, Scream is a “meta horror,” as the movie knows what it is – Horror – and offers humor and commentary about the genre’s hallmarks. As the franchise goes on, we learn more about the past of our final girl and those around her. 

With the release of the fifth Scream (2022) last year came a new era of Scream final girls, Tara Carpenter (Jenna Ortega) and her sister Sam (Mellisa Barrara). It still takes place in Woodsboro and gives way to a new cast of characters while keeping some of the same characters like Sydney Prescott and Gale Weathers. 

The latest and sixth installment of the franchise is the first to go completely off of Sydney’s history and onto Tara and Sam. To really show this change, instead of being in Woodboro or anywhere near California we follow our protagonists to New York City. While this change is thematic and meaningful, it doesn’t actually affect the content or formula of Scream. 

As always, the movie starts with a phone call that leads some girl or sometimes a guy to be killed in some gruesome way. While this method has been tried and true, many fans were getting bored. It seems as though Scream 6 writers took that to heart and tried to make the opening as entertaining as possible: the Scream format, but double the gore, double the kills, and therefore double the fun.

In true Scream fashion, one of our legacy characters gets a call in their home and has banter with our secret killer: “You know, you’re like the tenth guy to try this, right?” says our in-universe reporter, Gale Weathers, to the killer. “It never works out for the dips**t in the mask.” 

The validity of this statement really does dive deep into Screams lore, as this is the sixth time a group of killers has made an attempt on people’s lives and is presumably the tenth person to try. 

Many fans and critics have spoken out about wanting to ‘Check their watches’ when particular gags that have been around in previous movies like the rules of whatever movie you’re in or the killer coming back from the dead for one last scare. I disagree with this as the recurring gags movie to movie really add to the meta-commentary.

“It was just really fun,” Spoons Stovall (‘24) states, “Not a lot of slashers franchises have evolved the way Scream has. “Its awareness was something a lot of people liked about the original, and I think it [Scream Six] has slipped into the space of modern horror movies effortlessly.” 

In my opinion, Scream 6 was actually really good. I would even argue that the concerns of some fans were the selling points of the movie. They gave consistency with the tried and true formula while using modern day tech to keep the style fresh.