Ghostface is back, kicking and screaming—and stabbing, punching and shot-gunning—in another bloody adventure where real life imitates the reel life of slasher movies. Like the other entries in the franchise “Scream VI,” now playing in theatres, sets out to deconstruct slasher movies, but actually delivers the gory slasher goods.
Set following the events of the 2022’s “Scream,” the new film moves the action out of Woodsboro, California, site of the previous Ghostface killings, to New York City at Halloween. The “core four,” the survivors of Ghostface’s latest rampage—sisters Samantha and Tara Carpenter (Melissa Barrera and Jenna Ortega) and twins Chad and Mindy Meeks (Mason Gooding and Jasmin Savoy Brown)—hightailed it across country to attend school and put the past behind them, but trauma has a way of following a person.
Sam, who killed her boyfriend Richie Kirsch (Jack Quaid) when she discovered he was a Ghostface killer, in love with her simply because she is the daughter of the original killer in the screaming mask, is now seeking treatment, but admits, stabbing him 22 times, slitting his throat, and shooting him in the head, “felt right.”
No spoilers here, but suffice to say, the movie follows the “rules” laid out by film student Mindy: Rule one: As the franchise ages, the movies will get bigger. Rule two: Expect the opposite of last time. Rule three: Legacy characters and main characters are cannon fodder. No one is safe.
“Scream VI” feels fresher than you would expect from an almost thirty-year-old movie franchise. A rotating cast of new and old faces helps with that, providing new stories wrapped in nostalgia, but it also has something to do with the franchise’s desire to entertain at almost any cost.
This one is a tightly knit, if familiar-ish, story, amped up with gorier-than-usual killings—I’m sure I saw intestines!—and what Alfred Hitchcock would have called a “refrigerator climax.” That means it seems to make sense while you are watching it, but later, when you’re standing in front of the fridge looking for something to eat, and your mind drifts back to the film, you realize just how preposterous it was. The Grand-Guignol ending is over the top, but hey, remember rule number one?
“Scream VI” doesn’t exactly slash a new path for the franchise, but the expected mix of humor, gore and self-reverence and its willingness to be silly and kinda tense at the same earns it a recommend.
In “Pearl,” a new psychological horror film now playing in theatres, Mia Goth plays a young woman with a bad case of FOMO, a head full of dreams and murderous thoughts.
Set in 1918, the outside world is suffering through the Spanish Flu pandemic and World War I, but on the remote farm that Pearl (Goth) calls home, nothing ever happens. Her first-generation German immigrant mother (Tandi Wright) is a strict “be happy with what you have” type who truly believes life never turns out the way you hope it will. When she isn’t caring for her comatose father (Matthew Sunderland), Pearl dreams of being a dancer in the movies. “I’m special,” she says. “One day the world is gonna know my name.”
Her husband Howard was supposed to take her away from the dreary farm life, but he went to war instead, leaving her behind. When she meets a “bohemian” film projectionist at the local Bijou, he encourages her to live out her dreams, but she feels bound to her parents. “If only they would just die,” she says.
When an audition comes up at the local church for a part in a dance revue, she sees a way out of her humdrum life, but what about her parents? “I will never let you leave the farm,” says her mother.
“Pearl” is a prequel of sorts to “X,” director Ti West’s previous film. That film stars Goth as Maxine, a 1970s adult entertainer who believes she is destined for a bigger and better life outside the strip club run by her boyfriend. When they concoct an idea to shoot a porno film, they choose a remote farm, one that STRONGLY resembles the farm in “Pearl.”
In both films, ambition and dreams blur to turn deadly, but you don’t need to have seen “X” to understand “Pearl.” Above all else, “Pearl” is a character study of a trouble young woman, anchored by a fearless performance from Goth. In work reminiscent of Anthony Perkins in “Psycho” by way of director Douglas Sirk. Goth is both over-the-top and understated, switching from demur, to wild-eyed to sympathetic with her malleable, expressive face. The last shot, a grin that will burn its memory in your brain, is not only a testament to Goth’s orthodontist, but also gives Conrad “the man who laughs” Veidt a toothy run for his money.
It is a remarkable performance—including a lengthy monologue that showcases all the various sides of Pearl’s personality—at the heart of this truly oddball and off-kilter examination of the push-and-pull between repression and the need for attention. Whereas “X” was a tribute to the slasher movies of the 1970s, this film has some brutal moments, but doesn’t have the scares. There are unpleasant moments, but this is an homage to the heightened melodramas of the 1950s and 60s. But with more axes, scarecrow sex and hungry alligators than Sirk could ever have imagined.
“Pearl” is being billed as a slasher, but it’s really a cinematic collage of styles with Goth as the glue that binds them together.
Richard joins CTV NewsChannel and anchor Jennifer Burke to have a look at new movies coming to VOD and streaming services, including Johnny Knoxville and the unnatural acts of “Jackass Forever,” the reboot of “Scream,” the unhappily ever after fairy tale “The King’s Daughter” AND the great punk rock doc “Poly Styrene: I Am a Cliché.”
It’s been more than a quarter of a century since the original “Scream,” starring David Arquette, Neve Campbell and Drew Barrymore, reinvented the slasher genre with a scary, funny and self-reverential take on things that go stab in the night.
Three sequels later, there’s a new edition, the inventively titled “Scream.” It’s the fifth film in the series, and they’re not calling it a sequel. It is, God help us, a relaunch, or, as they call it in the movie, a “requel.”
A mix of new and old characters, “Scream” takes place in Woodsboro, California, a sleepy little town whose peace and quiet was interrupted twenty-five years ago by a killer in the now iconic Ghostface mask.
The action in the new film gets underway as a new Ghostface killer sets their sights, and knife, on Tara Carpenter (Jenna Ortega), a teenage senior at Woodsboro High who enjoys “elevated horror.” (MILD SPOILER) Unlike the opening scene characters before her, Tara survives and is tended to by older sister Sam (Melissa Barrera) whose thorny history with Ghostface makes the pair a target for the masked killer.
As Ghostface’s killing spree continues, Sam turns to the old guard, Dewey Riley (David Arquette), television morning show host Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox), and Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell), for help.
“Scream” is much cleverer than the retread title and recycled killer would suggest. It continues the meta commentary on the rules characters in slasher movies must abide by if they expect to survive the knife but, more than that, it plays like a satire of itself. It’s a trickly line to walk but directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett stay the course.
As the killer carves notches on his belt, characters talk about “elevated horror,” and toxic fandom until the line between what the characters are talking about and what we’re watching on screen blurs into one bloody riff on postmodern horror and what it really means to be a “requel.” It is simultaneously self-reverential and mocking of the slasher genre, and values its cleverness as much as the kills that provide the scares.
The scary scenes don’t have quite the same atmosphere Wes Craven brought to his “Scream” instalments, but there are moments that linger in the memory. The old trope of revealing the killer behind an opening door is played for laughs and tension, and the loss of one of the “legacy” characters is actually kind of touching.
As expected, the killings are brutal and bloody, and mostly not played for laughs. The new “Scream” is the most gruesome film in the franchise, offering up piercing knives and gallons of pouring plasma. There are plot holes everywhere and the victims have usually done something to out themselves in harm’s way, but the killings are effectively played out.
“Scream” is a slasher movie that bends the rules of slasher movies but, best of all, it also breaks the sequel rule of diminishing returns. Adding a fifth entry to an established franchise, that holds up to the original, may be the movie’s biggest achievement.
“There’s Someone Inside Your House,” now streaming on Netflix, throws a Halloween assortment of slasher movie standards together, like good looking teenagers with dark secrets and a masked killer, to tell a story that falls somewhere on the Creep-O-Meter between “Scream” and “I Know What You Did Last Summer.”
Based on the Stephanie Perkins young adult novel, the story focusses on Makani Young (Sydney Park), a Hawaiian teenager who moved to a small Nebraska town to live with her grandmother after a traumatic incident at her old school.
At Osbourne High she is just one of a large group of kids harbouring shady pasts. The bloody, brutal murder of football star Jackson (Markian Tarasiuk) rocks the school, revealing a masked killer on the loose who exposes his victim’s darkest moments before offing them. And get this, the killer wears a 3-D printed mask of his victim while they do the dirty deed.
Creepy, right?
As the bodies pile up, Makani and her pals—imagine a modern day “Breakfast Club” comprised of astrophysicist Darby (Jesse LaTourette), a pill-popping smart aleck (Anthony Timpano), Zach, the son of a local farming magnate (Dale Whibley), Makani’s ex (Théodore Pellerin) and the kind-hearted Alex (Asjha Cooper)—investigate, hoping to end the killing spree before the killer ends their lives.
“There’s Someone Inside Your House” starts strong with the gruesome killing of the football star. It establishes the movie’s “the bloodier the better” attitude but while the killings continue, director Patrick Brice is more interested in the shocking secrets of the characters than their deaths. Sure, there are horror movie settings like corn mazes and long, dimly lit corridors, but Brice wants us to see the darkness of the characters, which is often hidden just under well-manicured surfaces. A perky high-school student council president, for instance, is revealed to be a closeted racist in a rather spectacular manner.
But, despite the sociological look at the lives and deaths of its characters, the film may have worked better, however, if we cared more about the people on screen. There are reveals, but Brice doesn’t allow the teen relationships to blossom, or the characters to create individual personalities. We get to know about Makani and her life, but her friends are all out of Central Casting. “You have no idea who I am,” the killer says when revealed. “You don’t even know who you are.” And, unfortunately, neither does the audience.
Brice attempts to drag “There’s Someone Inside Your House’s” throwback genre into the present with a mix of old-school thrills, modern cultural norms and a killer who takes the term “cancel culture” a bit too seriously, but never quite gets there.
“The Summer of Fear” continues on Netflix with the release of “Fear Street Part 2: 1978,” the second part of their R.L. “Goosebumps” Stine trilogy about the cursed town of Shadyside, where terrible things have been happening for three hundred years.
Moving backwards in time sixteen years from the first instalment, this movie takes place in 1978. Against a classic slasher movie backdrop, a local sleep-away on a lake called Camp Nightwing, a group of teens, half from the Richie-rich town of Sunnyvale, the others from the possibly possessed Shadyside, get ready for a summer of swimming, campfires, secret hook-ups and… murder. As Ziggy Berman (“Stranger Things’” Sadie Sink) says, “bad things always happen to Shadysiders.”
Cue the gallons of blood, masked killer, a pentagram and more clues as to why some Shadysiders just can’t stop killing people. With axes.
In real life 1978 was a pretty good year for horror movies. “Halloween,” “Stranger in Our House” and “Dawn of the Dead” all dropped that year, and all feel like they are paid homage to by director Leigh Janiak. “Friday the 13th” also looms large over “Part 2,” both in vibe and look.
Janiak is faithful to the tropes of vintage slasher films, and despite the young adult label that comes with Stine’s work, doesn’t spare the blood, allusions to sex, the language or the scares. Characters we care about are offed with mighty swings of an axe, blood squirts and the teens react how teens would react, by using language that may make mom and dad blush.
“Fear Street Part 2: 1978” may look in the rear view mirror for inspiration but what is innovative is the way it links with the other two movies, connecting the narrative over the course of the trilogy. They aren’t sequels to one another, but one Shady-verse, bound by a certain set of rules, some of the same characters and lots and lots of gore.
“Fear Street Part 2: 1978” is rated R for obvious reasons, but the rating feels necessary and authentic to the genre. What feels less necessary are scenes of exposition and a drawn-out storyline between Ziggy and sister Cindy (Emily Rudd), but when the rest works so well, these are quibbles.
Did you love “Halloween III: Season of the Witch”? Wipe it from your memory. What about “Halloween H20: 20 Years Later”? Fuhgeddaboudit. How about “Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers” or any of the other masked killer films that came after John Carpenter’s 1978 slasher classic? They don’t exist. When you lay down money for a ticket to the new “Halloween” you are erasing four decades of slashing and dashing and seeing a direct follow-up to the original film.
Jamie Lee Curtis returns as Laurie Strode, the resourceful babysitter who, forty years ago, bravely stood up to masked killer Michael Myers (Nick Castle). The intervening years have seen her raise her now estranged daughter Karen (Judy Greer) and live in a home fortified with booby-traps in case Myers should reappear. “He’s waited for this night,” she says. “I’ve waited for him.”
At the beginning of the film Myers—known as ‘The Shape’ in the first movie—is still paying the price for killing his teenage sister Judith and the subsequent slaughter of four others. Tucked away in Smith’s Grove Sanatorium he is silent, a man who hasn’t spoken since committing his first murder at the age of six.
When Aaron Korey (Jefferson Hall) and Dana Haines (Rhian Rees), two British true crime podcasters, try to pry and interview out of Myers they arrive just before the Bogeyman escapes on October 31, 2018, put on the famous mask and reboot his killing career with an eye toward the one victim who got away all those years ago.
The 1978 and 2018 movies share more than a title and a leading lady. They share structural DNA and frights galore. The 2018 film feels fresh, timely and like a throwback to the moody low-fi scares of the original slasher flicks.
Castle is as eerie as always but it is Curtis who steals the show. Strode is grown up, suffers from PTSD and by her own words is “a basket case.” What she is not is broken. “I prayed every night for him to escape,” she says, “so I could kill him.” The trauma of 40 years ago has hardened her but she’s a warrior and a survivor who uses the great personal price Myers extracted from her as fuel to keep going. It’s tremendous stuff and in the #MeToo era the kind of heroine reclaiming her power that should make audiences cheer.
“Halloween” is both a reboot and a bloody love letter to the director who started it all, John Carpenter.
