Scream VI review: Intense, terrifying and clever | Films | Entertainment

Numberless reboots were all the rage but surely they thought of calling it 5CREAM? The term requel was coined by horror buff Mindy in the last film, who, honouring a series tradition, openly discussed the tropes of the horror movie.

She defined a requel as a numberless reboot that includes characters from the original movies but also introduces new ones, in an attempt to appeal to old and young viewers alike.

So the Rocky-like Roman numerals of Scream VI tell us that it satirises franchise movies, not the reboot.

As Mindy now points out, we are deep into a franchise. The fictional film-within-a-film Stab series, she says, is now at the same stage where The Avengers franchise killed off Iron Man and Star Wars did away with Luke Skywalker.

This means new and old characters alike are all fair game for the next lunatic (or lunatics) drawn to a Ghostface mask.

This isn’t just bad news for Courteney Cox’s Gale Weathers (the one returning character from the 1996 original) but also the four young survivors of the previous film.

Sisters Sam (Melissa Barrera) and Tara (Jenna Ortega), plus twins Chad (Mason Gooding) and Mindy (Jasmin Savoy Brown) have moved to New York City to escape the murder hotspot of Woodsboro, California.

When a new Ghostface hits Manhattan it seems nobody is safe.

At times the film is a bit too clever for its own good but, thankfully, it doesn’t forget the core purpose of the scary movie.

The most memorable sequence puts aside the winking humour to find nail-biting tension in a subway train beset with dodgy electrics and packed with partygoers in Halloween costumes.

It’s almost as terrifying as London’s Northern Line on a Saturday night.