My time getting caught up with the Scream franchise is coming to a close, at least for now. With the last movie establishing a new lead and this being the first in the franchise to not have an appearance by Neve Campbell’s Sidney Prescott, I was excited to see what direction they would take things. While also certainly not the first of the series to take the events out of Woodsboro, it is nice to see them leaving the town behind for the big city. Should give more opportunity for some interesting set pieces for the kills.

After graduating from Woodsboro, Tara has gone off to college in New York, along with her other survivor friends Chad and Mindy. Her sister Sam has also joined the group in the Big Apple to look after her sister but things haven’t been going so great for her. Not only is she dealing with the trauma of the previous year’s events but a conspiracy has started online that she was actually the mastermind behind the killings and so she also has to deal with harassment from that. Sadly, there is no rest for the wicked, as a couple assholes in Ghostface masks show back up only to get got by a different set of assholes in Ghostface masks. Time to put on your suspicious face and start assuming everybody is a killer because it’s whodunnit time, baby!

I quite liked this one. I’ve been a fan of the recent Scream movies in general but I think this one really hits its stride. It manages to be extremely reverent of the previous films and use them in the plot without rehashing the actual beats of those films and making it feel like the writers were being lazy. With Gale being the only returning original series cast member and only for a very small amount of time, we really get to see the franchise develop its new leads and delve more into their relationship with these events. The “core four” returning from the previous film have great chemistry and, if anything, I’d like to see a bit more of Mandy and Chad. I also appreciate the darker edge that Sam has as the daughter of one of the killers. It helps her stand out from the innocent but capable victim that Sidney was.

As the movie itself points out, this entry has a bigger budget with some more bloody kills but it never goes over the top into the Saw or Terrifier level of masochistic violence. Being that it takes place in New York, it’s fitting that two of the best scenes in this happen in a bodega and a subway car. It’s interesting that this entry also feels like both a return to form and a change in direction for the plot itself. The motive is back to being about revenge for past wrongs like most of the other movies but the fact that the killers have more of a reverence for the real life events than the movies is a fun change. Instead of being obsessed with “Stab”, the films within the films based on the events of the films, they are obsessed with the actual Ghostface killers. It’s a fun twist to go multiple levels of meta since that makes them more into the actual Scream movies but not into movies at all in universe.

Really great entry and a fantastic slasher, especially for fans of the series. Shame they fucked up by firing Melissa Barrera for being on the right side of history.

Score: 4.5 out of 5