SCREAM VI
Cert: 18 | ★★★✩✩

Like Halloween, the Scream movies are a horror franchise that won’t die with each sequel over the past three decades trying to outdo the last in gore and senseless killings.

This latest instalment in the Woodboro saga comes a mere 12 months after the last, and its protagonists are once again in the crosshairs of the Ghostface killer.

This time, though, the action takes place in New York where sisters Sam (Melissa Barrera) and Tara (Wednesday’s Jenna Ortega) Carpenter hope to start a new life. In the company of their hometown friends Mindy and Mason, they find themselves at the centre of a killing spree in which people are murdered by a person in a ghost mask.

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Melissa Barrera and Jenna Ortega (Paramount Pictures)

Using self-referential horror genre tropes, the film mixes the old with the new in an effort to please both franchise die-hards and newcomers.

With the return of two legacy characters and the addition of some new ones, returning directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett keep it fairly safe by giving the fans exactly what they want.

Screenwriters James Vanderbilt, Guy Busick and Kevin Williamson deliver, once again, a screenplay that is obsessed with its own folklore, often resorting to overlong and needlessly verbose pronouncements on the whole genre in the process.

The writers are at their best when they tackle the subject of true crime fanaticism, a phenomenon that can stray into conspiratorial thinking.

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Dermot Mulroney in Scream VI (Paramount Pictures)

The ongoing Idaho University killings where thousands of so-called citizen journalists made themselves part of the investigation, being a case in point.

If you are willing to stomach characters who sound like they’ve swallowed a film studies manual and some fairly obvious plot-holes, Scream VI still manages to be gorier and truer to Wes Craven’s original movie than any of its predecessors.

As for the performances, Ortega is a mile ahead of everyone here, proving once again that she truly is the real deal and a true star in the making.