[Note: This article contains spoilers for Scream VI]
Scream VI’s killer-reveal scene is the franchise’s most prescient yet.
The thought of three killers with interlocking connections to the film’s main characters was well-executed; but James Vanderbilt and Guy Busick—the film’s screenwriters—made the villains’ use of technology perhaps as frightening as their murderous presence in New York City. Scream VI is a horror exposé on artificial homicide—the use of technology to kill one’s reputation has dangerous implications.
The Scream franchise has had its ups and downs, but Scream VI solidifies the iconic slasher series’ chances of living past the ill-reviewed Scream 3 (2000) and even improving beyond Scream 4 (2011). This new era in the Ghostface franchise is revitalized, fun, and modern. Largely, the relevance of Scream (2022) and its follow-up are beneficial—keeping up with the technology era. (For example, Scream [2022] maintains the iconic phone call intro scene, but with a smartphone and digital home security.)
One of the most poignant features of the film is its use of social media as a central vice against the film’s protagonists. Scream VI horrifies the even-darker truth that anyone can ruin a stranger’s reputation online—and online rumors don’t just stay in the e-world. In fact, the way in which the film’s killers stamp out the support of the Carpenters, getting them alone, is primarily through online smearing.
The film opens with a jolting kill from Ghostface fanboy Jason (Tony Revolori), reminding viewers that the film must only get more unrelenting in its kill scenes as the franchise continues; this is something Mindy (Jasmin Savoy Brown) later expounds upon in her typical cinephile’s monologue: for a legacy franchise to survive, no one—not even a fan-favorite character—is safe, and the stakes get ever higher. It also continues a long tradition of fourth wall-breaking humor; from the influence of the fictional Stab franchise, to Mindy constantly relating real events to film tropes—something reminiscent of Abed from Community—the film’s irony is endearing.
Following the opening scene, the main story continues with Sam (Melissa Barrera) and Tara Carpenter (Jenna Ortega) managing trauma and trying to navigate New York college life, respectively. Moving to the Big Apple didn’t help Sam’s reputation, however, as rumors online led to conspiracy theories that Sam is the true Ghostface, and framed Richie in the last film in order to carry on her father’s bloodstained legacy.
Only through online rumors is this notion nurtured to the point at which people at a college party and even Sam’s therapist are wary of the possibility. Sam crumbles under the weight of the lies spread online, yelling and threatening to fight one of the college party-goers. This doesn’t help her reputation, but it does put her on the map with the police. As the story progresses, she learns to trust her roommate, Quinn (Liana Liberato), Detective Bailey (Dermot Mulroney), and her core friends who traveled to NYC with her. A sequence of exhilarating kills and the revelation that the unknown Ghostface has a literal shrine in an old theatre—replete with previous Ghostface costumes, memorabilia, and weapons used in every kill—shows the rag-tag investigators that this is a more obsessive Ghostface than anyone who previously donned the long-mouthed mask.
At the theatre, when the three killers (Quinn, Detective Bailey, and Ethan [Jack Champion]) are revealed, each of them goes on their own monologue, developing the reasons for their killing spree and torment of the Carpenters. Their most powerful weapon other than the knives and shotgun was actually the internet. Perhaps in another era—when Internet Explorer was just booming and most computer interaction was keystroke-based—the use of the internet to kill someone’s reputation would have been laughable, especially in a horror film. But now, with the presence of cyber-attacks as a constant threat to identity and money protection, the killers’ abuse of it is terrifying. It begs the viewer to question their friends, their social media profile, and the value of what they post.
Hopefully the cases of sadistic murderers using social media to disparage a person’s reputation in an effort to destroy their lives before taking them is a rare occurrence. Nevertheless, the sentiment (though it be over-dramatized) of the ruinous extent to which technology may be used is ever-relevant. Not only is there the pre-existing notion of the online persona—which we all fall victim to at some point—there is also the notion of the online reputation: an inanimate example is film. When Babylon debuted in late-2022, people on Twitter and Letterboxd were raving. It was peak cinema, they claimed. But in real life, not only did it flop at the Box Office, the people who did end up seeing it (at least the ones I talked to) didn’t like it. (Read my full review.) So with people: one may have a good or bad reputation online, and be received in a wholly different way in person.
The fact of our age is, one may develop their own online persona and amass a great following without showing their true personality. So, too, one may be genuine online (or even fun and careless about maintaining online presence) and still be disparaged, or harmed, by what other people say online.
(When I started writing this after the film originally released, I did not expect Artificial Intelligence [A.I.] to be such a powerful tool in the exact issues I’m surveying. But now, since there have been a few frightening stories of A.I.’s abuses, it seems ever more prevalent, bringing the darkness of Scream VI’s use of social media to another level.)
Overall, I enjoyed Scream VI as a franchise-legacy film and as the second installment in the new series. It’s ironic, satirical, and gruesome—what Scream fans want—while at the same time bringing a fresh and jolting take on the iconic mask-wearing slasher.