Scream VI

That being said, each Scream movie I see makes me really start to see the holes in the franchise.

Mindy's rules about franchises are frankly stupid. For many of those franchises the major character didn't die because the franchises were sick of them or killed them off to be edgy or to pass the torch. For some of those deaths, like James Bond, Tony Stark, and to a lesser extent Luke Skywalker, they died because that was the right place to end their stories. I would have held on to Luke for one additional movie, but acting like regular franchises approach character deaths the same way as horror films is wrong-headed. No wonder Mindy has fingered wrong suspects in both movies. She doesn't actually understand how storytelling works. She assumes that everybody who makes a movie is as detached and cynical as she is. And that's one of the biggest faults of the Scream franchise. It assumes all movies are as cynical as IT is.

And forget horror movie plotholes (which the franchise loves to thumb its nose at) the thing about the franchise that really made me question its logic was the invention of the Stab movies in Scream 2. Are you telling me, there wouldn't be national ban on Ghostface masks after the events of Scream 2? Am I believe a bunch of random people can feel comfortable and unnoticed wearing them on a subway in the middle of a Ghostface killing spree? Forget horror movie logic, is REAL-WORLD logic too much to ask for? I get the franchise deconstructs horror fans and how unhealthy that obsession can be. But I'm convinced it's the added element that these real in-world murders have been turned into horror films, much less horror films with multiple sequels, which is not credible.

Stephen King's "Rage" was basically a how-to guide for school shooters. Once that became clear, the book went out of print. There has been no real-world horror franchise in history that has been responsible for the amount of death and destruction as the Stab movies in this fictional Universe. How is it they are treated as normal horror films in-Universe despite how many copycats they've inspired?

I mentioned the film perhaps not understanding the intention of many long running series in having a major character die to end their arc. Mindy blithely refers to it as killing off a Legacy character. While I think it's a stupid interpretation said by someone who watches movies, but never actually loves them, what it also did was raise awareness of how much potential danger Gale Weathers and Kirby were actually in. When Chad comes out on the stretcher at the end and Kirby says that sometimes legacies aren't all bad, we exhale. But it was good to put the idea in our heads that the main characters were less safe than they turned out to be. Whatever I think of Mindy's film opinions (and I think she's a cynical hack) it DID up the tension a LOT, particularly during Gale's set-piece.

Speaking of Gale, I did not like how she started off the movie, and how she will inevitably start off the next movie. Since the mid-1990's Gale Weathers has been permitted zero character growth or wisdom. And maybe I'm expecting too much from a horror film series, especially one that leans so heavily into comedy, but it bums me the hell out anyways.

I hope Neve Campbell comes back in the future, but I hope she is paid the high salary she has earned at this point. It should be commended that the movie treated her character's absence quite respectfully, which is not the first instinct of many franchises whose actors can't come to terms with returning. It will help ease tensions with Campbell in the future, yes. But the non cynic in me simply thinks it's a nice thing to do for the audience as well. And I appreciate that very much.

So yeah, I liked it. But each Scream movie becomes less and less credible, especially with me existing in a real world where random planned murder sprees by teenagers are common and devastating. Can you imagine somebody trying to make a horror franchise from the events of Newtown or Sandy Hook? The idea isn't just obscene. It's ridiculous. Which is basically what I'm accusing the idea of the Stab movies as being. ****.