Movie Reviews

REVIEW: ‘Scream VI’ Is an Action-Packed, Galvanizing Tour de Force

Published

3 years ago

March 8, 2023

I kinda wish I could say that the Scream franchise has jumped the shark with this latest chapter — we all know that day is coming — but it hasn’t. Not this time.

We might have the “core four” to thank for that. The “core four” consists of last year’s survivors, Sam (Melissa Barrera), Tara (Jenna Ortega), Mindy (Jasmin Savoy Brown), and Chad (Mason Gooding). That accolade doesn’t just go for the on-screen characters, but Scream VI has some of the best damn young actors in Hollywood today.

L-r, Hayden Panettiere (“Kirby Reed”), Jasmin Savoy Brown (“Mindy Meeks-Martin”), Jack Champion (“Ethan Landry“), Melissa Barrera (“Sam Carpenter”), Jenna Ortega (“Tara Carpenter”), Mason Gooding (“Chad Meeks-Martin”) and Courteney Cox (“Gale Weathers”) star in Paramount Pictures and Spyglass Media Group’s “Scream VI.”

Easter Egg Hunt

This review is going to be somewhat short because I don’t want to give away any spoilers or inadvertent clues to this edge-of-your-seat thrill ride. But I will move forward as if you have already seen the last film, so if you haven’t, check it out before you see Scream VI, there are a lot of things you should know that are going to make your experience a lot richer.

Cold Open

First, let’s start with the ubiquitous cold open. Scream VI has the weirdest and most satisfying prologue since four. Again, it is better that I don’t mention what it involves because that’s part of the fun. But I will tell you that Easter has come early because there are eggs everywhere. If any movie can get you to watch it twice, it’s this one. Once, for the main action, and again to for the IYKYK treasure hunters.

Ghostface in Paramount Pictures and Spyglass Media Group’s “Scream VI.” © 2022 Paramount Pictures. Ghost Face is a Registered Trademark of Fun World Div., Easter Unlimited, Inc. ©1999. All Rights Reserved.”. Ghost Face is a Registered Trademark of Fun World Div., Easter Unlimited, Inc. ©1999. All Rights Reserved.”

Actiony

Scream VI has the most action sequences of the first three films combined. This is like the Die Hard of horror. Again, giving anything away is not going to make us feel good so we’ll move on. But suffice it to say that there are some real nail-biting showpieces that never had this much bang in past films. I found myself yelling at the screen amongst my journalistic colleagues and I never do that. This is a fun ride in a full theater so don’t go through all your popcorn in the first 30 minutes.

L-r, Melissa Barrera (“Sam Carpenter”) , Jenna Ortega (“Tara Carpenter”), Jasmin Savoy Brown (“Mindy Meeks-Martin”) and Mason Gooding (“Chad Meeks-Martin”) star in Paramount Pictures and Spyglass Media Group’s “Scream VI.”

Family & Core Four

In Scream (2022) there was a heavy emphasis on family. We got to see Sam’s slow descent into madness while trying to stave off Ghostface. Eventually, her psycho superpower was enough to beat the killer with the help of Master Yoda…er, Daddy Billy Loomis. Scream VI is forged on the strength of extended family. As Dom Toretto would say, “I don’t have friends, I have family.” And of course, there is the sisterly relationship between Sam and Tara. Only a year has passed since the events in Woodsboro and they haven’t had time to heal, let alone understand how to move forward. Both Barrera and Ortega have so much talent.

Ghostface in Paramount Pictures and Spyglass Media Group’s “Scream VI.”

Recall Factor

I said before that you should watch the 2022 Scream before Scream VI. I would also recommend you watch all of the Scream movies before heading into this one. Whereas in Scream (2022) fandom was cut down to size, Scream VI is an Oscar speech to aficionados of the franchise. It is going to be helpful as a fan to have a refresher, and helpful to people who only casually watch for reference points.

Let’s put it this way: if you have never seen a Scream movie you will still have fun, but you run the risk of ruining your date’s post-movie high by asking a lot of questions. Don’t do that. Do your homework.

L-r, Melissa Barrera (“Sam Carpenter”), left, and Jenna Ortega (“Tara Carpenter”) stars in Paramount Pictures and Spyglass Media Group’s “Scream VI.”

Sidney?

Scream VI has such a solid backbone it can stand on its own. Enough can’t be said about this talented group of actors. They really appreciate the franchise.

You have to remember some of these actors weren’t even born when the first Scream was released. In fact, Ortega wouldn’t come into the world until seven years later. That means everything Wes Craven did by re-inventing the horror rules back in 2009, a refreshed generation has entered the picture and re-invented their own. Just as we millennials appreciated what the original movie did back then, a whole new crowd is going to appreciate what it does today. Craven is applauding from the grave.

So yes, Sidney might be missed in spirit, but you’ll hardly know she’s gone. Or is she?

The Unmasking (No Spoilers)

As with all the Ghostface movies, there comes that element of anticipation as you try to figure out who is holding the knife and wearing the mask. That final 10 minutes when the killer is revealed and the audience lets out a collective “ooohhh…!” If the filmmakers have done their job, the reveal leaves us with “that tracks” rather than “I knew it!” Scream VI follows that same formula where it’s not so much the destination as it is the journey. I won’t say anything more about that.

Final Thoughts: Scream VI

Bloodier than the ones before it. With more action than in recent memory, and a cast full of talented actors, I bet Scream VI is going to float to the top of franchise favorites. While the formula is relatively unchanged, the movie still has tons of surprises. This can’t be said for vintage slashers of the past.

Scream continues to change the game (and the rules) and so far, it has worked; no sharks have been jumped. Until that day comes, the king of slashers still reigns supreme.

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Movie Reviews

‘ZombieCON Vol. 1’ Gets the Con Right. The Zombies Arrive When They Want To.

Published

4 days ago

April 28, 2026

Luna Gray

ZombieCON Vol. 1 follows Rocket’s Rockets, a cosplay crew who are three-time regional anime convention champions, two of whom also wrote the film alongside their director, and it delivers a genuinely heartfelt love letter to nerd culture.

Just think Knights of Badassdom, a horror film that needs you to understand why these people care about what they care about before it can ask you to care about them. Although, I think the whole “Cosplay is lame”! Thing died out a long time ago.

The Comedy

The practical makeup effects look like the work of actual cosplayers competing, not Hollywood’s approximation of cosplayers competing, and the distinction is the difference between a film that is looking at this world from the outside and one that has been living in it.

The characters carry the specific mixture of expertise and softness that comes from living inside a somewhat shunned culture. However, ZombieCON Vol. 1 leans into that culture in a loving, non judgemental way.

The Scott Pilgrim energy in the fight staging earns its references rather than just pointing at them. The anime visual grammar is sincere, not ironic, which is the only register in which this kind of thing is actually funny. The film borrows inspiration from just about everyone but somehow manages to do it respectfully.

The Cast

Punkie Johnson came to this from Saturday Night Live, and the gap between her and the rest of the ensemble is perceptible in every scene they share. She finds the timing on lines that are still looking for their timing, lands the joke at the exact moment before the scene needs to move on, and the effect is that everything around her becomes more controlled in her presence.

Erin Áine as Claire carries the film’s stranger turns without explaining them. The character is asked to move from one kind of story into another, several times, in ways the film does not prepare you for, and Áine moves with it without telegraphing the transition or breaking register. Manny Luke’s Rocket is calibrated to produce friction from the opening scene, and Luke commits to it without softening it or winking at the audience about it.

What It Is

ZombieCON Vol. 1 has a first act that takes thirty-one minutes to produce its first zombie, a budget that shapes what the horror can do once the horror arrives, and a cast that makes both of those things survivable.

The audience for this kind of film has been burned before by entries that treat cosplay culture as the setup for a punchline. This one does not do that. It lives inside the culture rather than observing it, and the result is a horror comedy that earns the affection it is asking for even when the seams are showing.

ZombieCON Vol. 1 is free on Tubi.

Movie Reviews

‘Don’t Die’ Is a Good Friday Night Horror Film And That Is Enough.

Published

5 days ago

April 27, 2026

Luna Gray

Don’t Die hits UK digital April 27 via Miracle Media. Benjamin Stark wrote and directed it. It played Panic Fest 2024 and spent the better part of two years making the quiet festival rounds, waiting for the right audience to find it. That audience is you.

What Happens

Jenks, played by Theodus Crane, needs medication he cannot afford. He breaks into a small-town pharmacy after hours. This was supposed to be clean. Nobody was supposed to be there. The pharmacist, Julia, played by Virginia Newcomb, was working late. She gets shot. Not knowing what else to do, Jenks takes her exactly where she tells him to take her.

This turns out to be a remote cabin run by a small collective quietly distributing medication to people who cannot access it through legal channels. The Robin Hood framing is warm, and the film offers it genuinely before slowly removing the warmth.

The Turn

The group running the cabin is not irrational. They believe what they are doing matters. They believe the math is simple. People need blood and organs, medication costs money, two strangers showed up and nobody outside knows where they are. Jenks figures out what that math adds up to about two minutes before the film shows it explicitly, and Crane plays the moment of comprehension exactly right. Quiet. Still. The kind of fear that does not move.

Stark earns the horror here because the people doing terrible things are not doing them out of cruelty. They have a system. They have a purpose. No villain monologue. No sadistic speech. They are calm and businesslike about it. That calm is what makes the third act work. Horror is rarely as effective as when the threat makes a kind of sense.

The Cast

Crane carries it. He plays Jenks as a man who keeps choosing decency as the available options narrow, and that consistency is what makes the back half hit as hard as it does. The performance never reaches for sympathy. It does not need to.

Newcomb as Julia is the other weight-bearing wall. She has the harder job. Her character moves from victim to something more complicated without the script telegraphing the shift. She handles it without calling attention to the handling.

Joshua Burge rounds out the central trio as Randy, the friend who shows up when needed and clocks the situation faster than any reasonable person should. If you don’t have a Randy in your life, make sure to get one.

What It Is and Is Not

Don’t Die was marketed as horror. It earns the label by the end, but it arrives there through crime thriller territory, and the patience of the first two acts is deliberate and correct. The tension builds quietly. When the horror finally arrives it lands harder because of the time spent getting there.

The budget limitations are present and real. Small locations, a tight cast, minimal spectacle. Stark works within them rather than against them, and for the most part it does not show. The pacing stumbles in the back half, running about five minutes longer than it should in the wrong places. There are moments where the momentum stalls. Neither is fatal.

It does not have much to say about healthcare beyond using it as a mechanism for the plot. That is fine. Not every film needs a thesis. This one tells a good story, maintains tension across most of its runtime, delivers a few genuine scares, and knows exactly what it is. Most low-budget horror manages one of those things.

Don’t Die is on UK digital now. Good Friday night film.

Movie Reviews

Content Is Now on Digital. Watch It Twice.

Published

5 days ago

April 27, 2026

Luna Gray

Content, Adam Meilech’s screenlife horror satire, arrives on UK digital April 27 via GrimmVision following a strong festival run that included Grimmfest 2025. The whole film plays out across phones and laptop screens. It opens on a sham. It ends somewhere you did not expect to go.

What It Is

The opening scene drops you inside Therapals, a fake online therapy platform where the therapists are just untrained people trying to earn a paycheck. The first patient our protagonist connects with has the energy of an angry Ryan Reynolds and, with complete calm, tells her he is thinking about killing his neighbor.

From there Meilech begins stacking story on top of story in a way that will either lose you or thrill you, and which one depends entirely on your tolerance for the extremely meta. At the center is AJ, played by Meilech himself: actor, writer, director, stalker, kidnapper, psychopath.

While there is a clear line to be drawn from Content and Milk & Serial, Meilech provides a wonderful villain. His polite swagger and genuine enthusiasm make one of the most powerfuly wicked online personas I have seen in a while.

The Cast and the Method

The cast is Megan Boehmcke, Alex Mills, and Vaune Suitt alongside Meilech, operating under conditions that range from unpleasant to genuinely alarming. AJ records himself playing therapist to himself and plays the recordings back. He pays a stranger to pose as a mentor figure for his male actor, who believes he is in on a bit the whole time. He performs takes over and over in the Kubrick tradition until he gets what he wants. Eventually he just moves his lead into his apartment.

To get a real reaction during a shoot, he shows up and actually hits the actor. The poor actor, still in the scene, asks if they can reshoot. This dude is so desperate for a part, he is willing to show he can make his pain more entertaining.

Where It Sits

The several story arcs running at once can be genuinely hard to follow and Content is not interested in making things easier. That is a feature, not a flaw. The bad guy is normal looking. He lives in a shared apartment. He does not signal his intentions in any way that would help you see it coming. There is real secondhand cringe to watching private moments captured without the subjects knowing, which is the film’s most effective trick, and Meilech commits to it completely.

It lands somewhere between Milk and Serial and Creep in the first half, and ends up closer to Funny Games meets Better Watch Out by the final act. That is an unusual place to land. It is also exactly the right one. Content is available now on UK digital via GrimmVision.