ThisScream 6article contains spoilers.
Scream 6has a killer opening sequence.
Its brutal yet almost perfunctory.
Young blonde woman gets skewered at the beginning of aScreammovie.
Worse, he picked his professor to die because she gave him a C-.
Unfortunately for Jason, he isnt actually speaking to his accomplice.
In Mindys case that means explaining the pressures on talent to extend a movie franchise in perpetuity.
No one makes just sequels anymore, you have to maintain a franchise!
Mindy exclaims in the quad to friends and the audience.
The term legacy sequel was even coined around this idea.
Laurie Strode, Ellen Ripley, even Luke Skywalker died onscreen, but their sagas stayed trucking.
Innovation is thus about making the same thing but in a slightly shocking context.
Scream 6does this very well.
The movie even managed to trick me.
I was dead certain that Kirby (Hayden Panettiere) was the killer.
Plus, Mindy didnt mention legacy characters could be the killer.
But apparently they cant.
Instead the big reveal is that rather than one Ghostface, or even two, there arethree.
Its a bigger spectacle than the ending of the last severalScreammovies.
But Im not convinced its better.
Scream 6returns a bit to the 90sScreamsequels more soapy plot lines.
Once again, the last movies killer came from a nutter family that is carrying on his good work.
Finally, Ghostface gets to be the good guy.
Its subversive but could it be pushing the story to its breaking point?
Six movies in, the actualScreammovies have avoided that fate.
But perhaps theyve done their job too well for me.
I dont want to see the Core Four butchered anymore than Dewey and Gale.
That of course could be the root of great horror, butScreamhas gone there as well.
Recall that before Deweys bittersweet death inScream 5, Randy Meeks was also core four inScream 2.
This movie even began with one new Ghostface killing another.
Commercially the series absolutely will continue, and Radio Silence seems keen on aScream 7.
In fact, screenwriters Vanderbilt and Busick previously teased this new era is its own trilogy.
So they very well could have thought ahead how to subvert expectations again.
Scream 6is out in theaters now.
