Reviews
TIME TO GHOST-FACE THE MUSIC: A Completely SPOILER-FREE ‘Scream 6’ Review
To all my Amber Freemans of the world that the lovely Ian wrote about in his latest article, put your “Welcome to Act Three” guns DOWN. Don’t shoot. I like Scream 6! I would go as far even to say it’s a pretty good movie! But it isn’t without its fair share of issues.
As was prominently featured in the promotional material for this film, Ghostface’s mask has been weathered by time and the changing of hands; in a way, this brave new installment also carries the scars of past entries as much as that signature screaming white plastic does, for better and for worse.
WHERE’D I LEAVE THAT MASK?
Scream 6 picks up a year after the last film, and brings us to New York to follow survivors Samantha and Tara Carpenter, as well as the wonderful Mindy and Chad Meeks-Martin as they’ve slowly settled into a life beyond Woodsboro’s horrors…do I even have to say ‘as if’? Soon, the crew is terrorized by Ghostface, hellbent on getting to Sam by picking off her friends and family. Who will live to see another day as Ghostface slashes through Manhattan?
…Oh, also, Gale is there too!
NO MORE GAMES FOR SIDNEY, PLEASE
I kid Miss Weathers, but one of the most important things for fans to get used to going forward, beyond the change of location (something last attempted in Scream 3), is the hotly discussed absence of Sidney. In turn, Gale gets reduced screen time as the new blood of the series takes center stage.
Beyond the controversy surrounding Neve Campbell and Paramount lowballing her (which, studios shooting themselves in the foot, what’s new?), I think the departure of Sidney was for the best. I sincerely hope Radio Silence doesn’t start jamming additional pages into the proverbial Book of Prescott; her saga is completed in a great way.
They are (for now) letting the final girl have the final word with her own happy ending. Besides, focusing on Samantha’s story of inner turmoil and bloodlust in this one is the right choice because it is every bit as compelling as Sidney’s evolution as a character. I can’t wait to see where the Carpenter sister’s tale takes us.
BIG APPLE, BIGGER KILLS
Speaking of Radio Silence (that’s the production team headed by director duo Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett for the uninitiated), another thing I have to give them credit for is a sense of escalation when it comes to how brutal the Scream movies are.
Scream 3 blew up an entire house to kill one person, but when people die in the Radio Silence films, they die hard, and the camerawork forces you to look at it with uncomfortable close-ups. Scream 5 was the bloodiest in the franchise…until this one came along. Every kill has weight behind it, and no one feels safe from a traumatic and devastatingly painful death when the knives come out. It’s all a testament to how good the directing is, solidly the film’s greatest technical strength, and I wonder how they will keep this momentum going into Scream 7.
BUT THAT OPENING…
It all looks great on camera, but this brings us to one of the first things I wasn’t sold on: the opening kill, the tradition that perfectly encapsulates what Scream is about. 6’s opening is a unique “first in the series” but isn’t particularly shocking thinking back to the other inaugural stabs of the franchise. Is it entertaining for a slasher opening? Yes! The most gruesome? Probably, the whole affair is a meat grinder. But does it stun the senses and downright shock like Scream usually does?
No, not really.
The opening will only really get you if you don’t know how these movies operate, which is hard to believe given this series’ fanbase. It certainly could have been cut by a few minutes for that classic Scream opening gut-punch feeling. In isolation, it drags on too long; compared to the other openings, it’s tough to beat 1, 2, & 4’s, and frankly doesn’t dethrone any of them in the top 3.
GHOSTFACE OFTEN STUMBLES, BUT THE PACING AND CAST DON’T
Barring the very lengthy opening, Scream 6 is paced perfectly and very well edited. I felt silly being so worried about the runtime, given how hefty it is coming in at over 2 hours, another first for the series. Nonetheless, they make it work, and there isn’t a minute of wasted screen time. When you’re not being thrilled, you’re being genuinely pulled in by the cast’s chemistry and camaraderie that’s beyond charismatic.
Melissa Barrera gets more screen time than in Scream 5, and the relationship portrayed by her and Jenna Ortega is the dense and well-acted emotional core of the movie. Is it even a spoiler to say the long-awaited return of Hayden Panettiere’s Kirby Reed and her inevitable meeting with Mindy would be wonderful? And if Mason Gooding is in frame, you know it will be a fun scene.
FUNNY LIKE A BUCK KNIFE TO THE GUT
Sadly, that brings me to some of the dialogue these characters share. While it is often endearing with its humor and has two of the franchise’s funniest moments courtesy of Gale Weathers, Scream 6 can also be too jokey for a Screamfilm.
Comedic relief is pretty much thrown out the window by the end of act 2 in almost all these entries, but there is a persistent bug of humor in 6 that puts a thorn in my side; one of our leads gets stabbed and feels the need to make a callback joke as they’re being dragged away for medical attention, which is way too quippy for as late in the movie as it comes, especially when Brett Jutkiewicz’s cinematography sets up the scene in a way that wracks more tension than Ghostface pumping out a shotgun shell.
Some characters also survive in a way that doubles down on deeply, deeply deflating the tension of the film and the would-be great ending. The reveal of one survivor in particular audibly elicited laughter from myself and several other theatergoers, and I don’t think it was the kind of laugh they were going for.
IT’S REALLY THAT SOUND THAT’S KILLING ME
Surprisingly, my most glaring problem with this film is the soundtrack. The music is always too loud and slightly off-tone when it’s not part of the OST. The chase scenes are frenetic, and the musical stings during deaths are bombastic, but during downtime and the moments where we’re getting to watch the cast at ease, the licensed songs chafe the eardrums. They even have the gall to cut off Red Right Hand at one point, which should be a crime against humanity if it isn’t.
Demi Lovato’s Still Alive is pretty catchy, though, so I’ll let that one slide.
WILL THE REAL GHOSTFACE PLEASE STAND UP?
Finally, you can’t talk about a Scream movie without mentioning the Ghostface reveal (still, no spoilers!). Something about the execution this time around just felt dry for the very juicy stage it’s set in. Take this with a grain of salt, given that I am a Roman Bridger fan, but I think the problem with the reveal this time around is that the motivations feel a little too plain and simple.
While the beat drop of who is under the mask is underwhelming, this film ultimately makes up for it with an explosive and enjoyable finale that will have your theater hooting and hollering like Stu Macher losing a lot of blood. Scream 6might have the most stabs in any Scream movie to date, and if you’re looking for carnage to close out your movie going experience, you’ll get your fill here. Scream 6’s ending is a glorious finale of brick lobbing, knife swinging, and deep cutting action that never disappoints in rounding out the runtime.
There’s that old adage about pizza: when it’s good, it’s good, and when it’s bad…et cetera. Scream 6isn’t perfect, but it is totally understandable why this would be someone’s favorite entry in the franchise; its landmark levels of bloody, undeniably funny at points, and it has all the elements you need from a Scream movie. I had a lot of fun watching this in a packed theater, and if you can do the same this opening weekend, see it while it’s still on the silver screen cause that’s the ideal way to experience Scream 6.
There are countless subgenres within subgenres for horror, and one that feels underutilized is workplace horror. Unless you’re one of the lucky few, most people wake up at some point during the day, go to work, and then come home. It’s one of the few things in life that’s nearly unavoidable. While there are countless real-life examples of workplace violence, seeing exaggerated forms of it in film can still be fun. When I pitched covering The Belko Experiment for this month, I actually thought I was pitching Joe Lynch’s Mayhem. I soon found out how incorrect I had been, but figured I’d go along with it anyway.
Mike Milch (John Gallagher Jr.) and 79 of his coworkers are locked inside the towering building they come to work in every day in Bogotá, Colombia. They’re given simple instructions: murder two coworkers within the next half hour. When they fail that task, coworkers’ heads start blowing up left and right. When they’re given the next task, kill 30 people in two hours, they take it…a little more seriously.
The Belko Experiment’s Brutal Premise Sets Up High Stakes
Written by James Gunn and directed by Wolf Creek creator Greg McLean, The Belko Experiment is a painfully by-the-numbers film that offers little more than a handful of entertaining kills. Its futile attempts at commentary regarding work/life balance or just how bad “faceless” upper management is fall so flat it’s comical. Nothing like multi-millionaire James Gunn telling me how awful it is to have to work a real job for a living. Great work. And its one-dimensional characters do little more than create a slight sigh of relief when they’re dispatched without regard.
A singular attempt at cleverness is broached from the beginning when we see a colony of ants in an ant farm on someone’s desk. Oh, look at that, these workers are nothing more than mindless ants! But any attempt at following that slightly clever idea is quickly thrown away. At one point, Barry Norris (Tony Goldwyn), the big boss in the office, attempts to group up who should and shouldn’t be killed; who has the most value outside of work. Gunn had the perfect opportunity to make Barry a deep and more sinister antagonist. If Barry had grouped people into sets from most to least profitable for the company, we would have something. It would show that Barry is a forward-thinking villain who is trying to suck up to the people who get paid even MORE than him!
Missed Opportunities for a Smarter Corporate Villain
I’ll do you one better. After all of that, what if the bad guys that Barry recruited to help him cull his subordinates realized they were just pawns in the game of Big Business? So then they attempt to repent by killing Barry in the hopes that they can find a common means of escape from this hell? Why is there zero attempt at making an interesting story other than this shitty, watered-down Battle Royale with people we don’t give a shit about? Instead of anything interesting, we’re just given a group of baddies who try to get into the security office’s gun safe. The only reason we’re slightly scared of the “bad guys” is because they’re bad guys.
The only slightly interesting performances we get are from David Dastmalchian and Adria Arjona, even if it might be a fluke. As someone who is a fan of Greg McLean and the Wolf Creek series, something just felt disconnected about nearly every aspect of The Belko Experiment. I’ve brought it up before that sometimes it’s okay to have a film that doesn’t tell a great story as long as the kills can carry some of the weight. But to say this film has a story is laughable, and that carries over to how flat this film looks.
Skip The Belko Experiment and Watch Mayhem Instead
It’s weird how sour this film left me. When I was watching it, I found myself grimacing at some of the kills. And I didn’t vehemently dislike it as much as this review would suggest. But as I sat there and thought longer, I just couldn’t wrap my head around what anyone sees in this. Mayhem is an all-around better film that tackles this same subject but in a much better way. So if you ever decide to sit down and watch The Belko Experiment, maybe go watch Mayhem on Shudder instead.
Would it be a month of coverage on Horror Press if I didn’t bring up at least one aughts film? I know the curator of all things Horror Press, James-Michael, is shaking his fists at the sky and cursing the fact that he approved me covering The Hitcher. Of all the remakes that were so pervasive throughout the aughts, The Hitcher is one that slipped completely under my radar. And that’s a damn shame. It wouldn’t be until I found a DVD copy at Bookoff that I finally got the opportunity to watch it. Hot damn, the critics really got it wrong here.
The Hitcher: A Road Trip Turned Nightmare
Jim Halsey (Zachary Knighton) and his girlfriend Grace Andrews (Sophia Bush) are on a road trip to Lake Havasu in Jim’s gorgeous Oldsmobile 442. An unfortunate run-in with a mysterious hitchhiker, John Ryder (Sean Bean), Jim and Grace find themselves in a fight for life and death. Only, John isn’t their only concern. With the 5-0 hot on their tails, Jim and Grace must escape from a psychopathic man with a death wish and the hot-tempered, hot-faced Lieutenant Esteridge (Neal McDonough). As the odometer grows, so does the body count.
The Hitcher is one of those remakes that does not have the approval of the original’s lead, Rutger Hauer. Which is astounding to me. Sure, the original is good. But it doesn’t set itself apart from the crowd too much. Rutger Hauer’s John is slightly more reserved, and while he has an edge to him, I don’t necessarily find him overly menacing. (Don’t kill me.) Sean Bean’s John Ryder, on the other hand, is furiously terrifying. There’s no question that there are tons of issues with the Platinum Dunes remake, though, for me, the pros significantly outweigh the cons.
Jim Halsey Falls Flat
The biggest issue is the character of Jim Halsey. I love how the roles of Jim and Grace are swapped from the original film. It brings an updated, modern edge to the film and is a great way to throw audiences who have seen the original. Though I can imagine the hyper-masculine fans of the original were not too happy with that. When it was decided to swap the roles of the characters, it seems like any character depth for Jim was thrown out of the window. I think Zachary Knighton is a wonderful actor who does the best with what he has, but he doesn’t have enough to work with. Writers Eric Red, Jake Wade Wall, and Eric Bernt updated the film with tons of epic scenarios and moments, while seemingly forgetting to make the supposed lead of the film interesting.
On top of cardboard Jim, the inciting police incident just feels very forced. Grace runs into a diner, covered in blood, after she and Jim found a family butchered by John. Someone from the diner calls the police, which leads to Jim and Grace being arrested and charged with murder. Whether or not that’s supposed to be commentary on rural police doesn’t matter because it completely fails to do anything other than forcibly push the story forward.
Besides that? I hate to say, but I don’t have many issues with The Hitcher.
Soundtrack and Atmosphere: A High-Octane Experience
First and foremost, The Hitcher’s soundtrack is incredible. We start the film with Move Along by The All-American Rejects. Talk about a shot of adrenaline. And the greatest needle drop in all of aughts horror history is Nine Inch Nails’s Closer during the film’s most wild car chase. It’s hard not to get lost in this film when the music kicks in.
What really sells this film is how intensely they handle the violence and the film’s gorgeous chase scenes. It’s no Death Proof, but these scenes are miles above the Fast movies that were out at this time. In a day and age where chase scenes are overly produced, badly edited, and just plain boring, The Hitcher manages to infuse horror and action in a way that probably won’t be seen again. Watching films like The Hitcher makes me sad for the state of modern cinema. The Hitcher wasn’t made to win scores of Oscars; it was made by people passionate about telling a badass, harrowing story (minus Jim). And they greatly excel at that.
The Hitcher Is a Misunderstood Cult Favorite
The Hitcher falls in line with my running theory of post-9/11 ultra violence. We were a nation scared of what happened, what was happening, and what seemed to be on the horizon–The Hitcher bottles that fear and anger, packaging it into a nasty piece of genre. Sean Bean and Sophia Bush are an on-screen match made in heaven. They wade through harsh lighting, thick film grain, and buckets of blood to deliver a film that critics and audiences unfairly panned. While audiences may have moved along, I sure didn’t. I want to exist in a world of nothing but aughts genre films, but am forced to live in a world of elevated horror. Le sigh.
