Warning: This article contains major spoilers for scream 6 (2023).
scream 6 it sticks to its franchise’s gory formula with the same light-hearted glee as previous installments in the series. Set in New York City, the film follows scream 5 Survivors Sam (Melissa Barrera), Tara (Jenna Ortega), Mindy (Jasmin Savoy Brown) and Chad (Mason Gooding) as they find their lives turned upside down yet again by the appearance of a new Ghostface killer (or? murderers?), who is determined to take away their happy ending.
guided by scream 4 survivor turned FBI agent Kirby Reed (Hayden Panettiere) and recurring Shout heroine Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox), scream 6The main four eventually discover an abandoned theater that has been turned into a shrine filled with memorabilia from the franchise’s past installments. It is in this theater that Chad, Sam, Tara and Kirby attempt to make their last stand against Ghostface. Unfortunately, a candid moment between Chad and Tara is cut short when Chad is repeatedly stabbed by not just one, but two Ghost Face Killers.
Moments later, Sam and Tara find themselves caught between Ghostface’s two killers, as well as their unmasked leader, Detective Wayne Bailey (Dermot Mulroney), the father of her promiscuous roommate, Quinn (Liana Liberato). It turns out that Wayne is not only Quinn de Liberato’s father, but also Ethan (Jack Champion), one of Tara’s college friends, and Richie Kirsch (Jack Quaid), the Ghostface assassin who was brutally killed by Sam de Barrera in scream 5. In a shocking twist, Wayne’s Ghostface accomplices are then revealed to be none other than Ethan and Quinn, the latter of whom the latter’s death was convincingly faked earlier in the film by her, Wayne, and Ethan to divert his “friends” from his trail. .
Continuing his villainous monologue, Wayne confesses that he was the one who built the Ghostface sanctuary discovered by Sam and his friends, using all the memorabilia his son, Richie, had collected while he was still alive. Wayne then demands that Sam put on the original Ghostface mask that he once wore. Shout murderer Billy Loomis (Skeet Ulrich), so he can frame her for the murders of her friends and sister. In retaliation, Sam, Tara, and an injured Kirby decide to fight Wayne, Quinn, and Ethan.
Tara kills Ethan by stabbing him in the mouth, while Sam shoots Quinn in the head. As Richie’s home horror movies play on his Shout broken screen of the sanctuary cinema, Mulroney’s Wayne subsequently finds himself being egged on over the phone by none other than Barrera’s Sam. Wearing his father’s Ghostface cloak, Sam then stabs Wayne to death as Tara stands stoically next to him. In the moments that follow, Tara agrees to start dealing with all the trauma she’s experienced by going to therapy, while Sam agrees to stop aggressively monitoring her sister’s life.
Outside the theater, the two sisters meet with Kirby, who tells Sam that he will always be around to help them because, according to her, they are “family” now. In the same scene, Sam and Tara discover that both Chad and Mindy survived their stabbings earlier in the film, as did Cox’s Gale. However, as the group begins to drift apart, Sam is briefly fascinated by her father’s Ghostface mask. Fortunately, she decides to put him down after Tara takes a moment to check on her.
Seconds later, scream 6 cut to black for the last time.
Narratively, scream 6 borrows a lot of elements from 1997 scream 2, which similarly picks up many of its predecessor’s characters when they are in college. Like Mulroney’s Wayne, scream 2The villain of Nancy Loomis (Laurie Metcalf), she is also the vengeful mother of a former Shout killer. The ending of the new movie, in particular, doesn’t waste an opportunity to highlight Sam’s biological bond with Billy and Nancy Loomis.
Barrera’s Sam visibly enjoys murdering Quinn and Wayne at the end of scream 6, and the uncertain longing in his eyes as he glances briefly at his father’s Ghostface mask suggests that the events of the film may have further strengthened Sam’s murderous instincts. Whether or not those instincts lead her towards total villainy remains to be seen. Either way, scream 6The surprisingly gory conclusion to makes it explicitly clear that Sam Carpenter is at least as formidable a survivor as Neve Campbell’s Sidney Prescott.
scream 6 it is now playing in theaters.
Editors’ Recommendations
