Is 'Scream' Losing Its Voice?

In January 2022, when the fifth Scream film came out, more than a decade had passed since someone had last donned the Ghostface mask and terrorized teens with threatening phone calls and a deftly wielded hunting knife. That movie, the first Scream not directed by the series’ now-deceased auteur, Wes Craven, had a lot of new developments to catch up on in the genre it ribbed so well: the rise of “elevated” horror, the tiresome formulae of legacy sequels, and how a killer who’s reliant on landlines might function in the smartphone era. The result was enough of a hit for executives to green-light Scream VI, which is rushing to multiplexes a mere 14 months later. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the follow-up has less to say.