Following the commercial and critical success of last year’s sequel reboot Scream, directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillette, and screenwriters James Vanderbilt and Guy Busick, almost immediately started to work on the next film in the franchise. Yet, that development soon was overshadowed by reports that one of the franchise’s foundational stars would not be returning.
But rest easy, Roger Jackson fans, the Voice of the Ghostface Killer in every “Scream” film since the original is back in the series’ latest — and, yes, goriest — sequel, Scream VI (★★★☆☆), to once again bitchily quiz his victims on scary-movie trivia.
Somehow, after years of Ghostface murders and dozens of victims throughout California, the nefarious makers of voice modulator tech still haven’t been banned from including that voice as an option. That’s a shame, since anybody can get their hands on one of those voice boxes to jumpstart their next killing spree.
And anybody does. The usual Scream rules still apply, as the killer behind the voice and Ghostface mask might be anyone in the cast, including the so-called “Core Four” who survived the last Ghostface massacre.
Those four — sisters Sam (Melissa Barrera) and Tara (Jenna Ortega), and twins Mindy (Jasmin Savoy Brown) and Chad (Mason Gooding) — have relocated from Woodsboro, California to New York City, hoping to put an entire continent between them and their horrific shared past. Of course, the past catches up to them in the form of a new Ghostface Killer who pointedly references all the previous psychos who have donned the mask.
So are we dealing with a copycat? A psycho scary-movie stan? A former perpetrator back for more blood? The mystery loops and turns with ample suspense, appealing camaraderie from the Core Four, and buckets of blood.
Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillette double-down on the graphic, gory deaths-by-stabbing. Favoring the vigorous technique that’s all the rage with crazed movie killers these days, Ghostface pounces on his victims, and then it’s STAB-stab-stabstabstabstabstabstab. Talk about overkill.
Whereas Hitchcock’s Psycho shower scene famously never showed the killer’s knife breaking flesh, here the camera lingers on impalements and slashings, to sometimes bitter effect. And, while the Scream movies have gotten progressively more gruesome — perhaps to keep up with audience appetite, or our exposure to all kinds of violence — they are not, in direct proportion, getting any funnier.
Franchise creators Kevin Williamson and Wes Craven mastered a blend of slasher horror and self-referential dark humor that only occasionally bubbles to the surface in Scream VI. A deadpan line of dialogue noting that a suspect was obsessed with Argento might get a chuckle out of serious horror fans, but references aren’t jokes. The comedy needs more punch.
The stalk-and-chase sequences, on the other hand, are pretty nifty — tense, twisting, and crisply edited, as in a standout scene following the Core Four onto the subway during Halloween weekend. The train cars and platforms are loaded with costumed revelers, giddy, noisy, and free, though some are guised balefully as familiar movie monsters. Everywhere, it seems, our fleeing Four are tossed in a sea of staring Freddy Kruegers, Pinheads, and Ghostfaces.
Fearing masked strangers in public places takes on new meaning in the COVID era. By the same token, Scream takes on new meaning set in a city of countless strangers.
The Four feel paradoxically more alone in a place like this — so alone, that they welcome the assistance of self-serving journalist Gale Weathers, portrayed as ever by Courteney Cox, who still looks like she’s having a ball playing the character, and definitely knows a thing or two about being there for her friends.
Scream VI is playing in theaters nationwide. Visit www.fandango.com.
King Molasses is brimming with a confidence that feels well-earned. Recently crowned the winner on season one of Revry's reality competition series King of Drag, the performer was also just voted D.C. Drag Awards' Drag King of the Year, their fourth time taking the honor.
"I've been doing drag in D.C. since late 2018, believe it or not," says Mo, as the performer likes to be called. "And I've been working pretty hard -- and working for a while -- in the scene." Still, they say they've been blown away by the reception they and their fellow King of Drag contestants have experienced since the show, the first to feature solely drag kings, wrapped in July.
Even by the unhinged standards of Stephen King’s wicked imagination, the United States of America envisioned in The Long Walk is one fucked up country. And yet, an American society that makes a contest of sacrificing its sons to gun violence, ostensibly for the sake of the republic, doesn’t fall far outside the realm of future possibilities.
King published the novel in 1979, under the pseudonym Richard Bachman, when enlisting contenders from each state into a deadly marathon of endurance, forcing them to keep up the pace or be shot to death by soldiers, must have read as an outlandishly grim metaphor for sending boys to war.
New York City has opened Ace's Place, its first shelter dedicated specifically to serving transgender and gender-nonconforming people experiencing homelessness. Operated in partnership with the Bronx-based LGBTQ nonprofit Destination Tomorrow, the 150-bed facility in Long Island City, Queens, will provide transitional housing and wraparound support services for residents.
Fully funded by the city for now, Ace's Place will receive $65 million to remain operational through 2030. In addition to housing, the shelter will offer on-site psychiatric care, medical referrals, culinary and GED classes, job training, financial literacy and life skills workshops, counseling, and other comprehensive services. Destination Tomorrow will manage day-to-day operations.
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