‘Scream VI’ Review: Once More Unto the Mask, as Melissa Barrera and Jenna Ortega Battle Ghostface in New York
Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic The phone-call-with-the-killer sequence that opens every “Scream” film is always a tasty appetizer, one that as the characters in any “Scream” film could tell you establishes the tone for the movie in question. In “Scream VI,” that scene kicks off at the bar of a trendy restaurant in downtown Manhattan. The woman seated at the bar is a professor of cinema studies, blonde and British. As she says on the phone to her online date, who can’t seem to locate the restaurant, she’s teaching a course in slasher films (which, the way she explains it, is no stab in the dark of plausibility). Her date, a sweetly annoying dork, is able to talk her out onto the street to help him find the place, and by the time she’s walking into a dark alley we know what’s coming. (His voice lowers into that familiar mocking AM-radio-DJ growl.) In this case, though, the killer is instantly unmasked as…a college bro. He returns to his apartment, and moments later he’s the scary-movie victim, talking on the phone with the real killer.