SCREAM VI

Let's be honest about both halves of this. SCREAM VI is competent horror craftsmanship — a suspenseful plot with many twists that, unlike the last installment, genuinely holds your interest despite a drawn-out ending. If you judged it by suspense alone, it works.

But suspense isn't the whole story. This is, by the source's own account, probably the bloodiest SCREAM movie yet. Extreme bloody mayhem runs throughout: many people stabbed, a few shot, corpses and pools of blood. On top of that sit more than 100 obscenities and profanities. The filmmakers indulge the gore to titillate, not just to frighten.

So even though the plot's intent is to stop an evil killer, the movie drowns that intent in graphic violence and gratuitous language. A film can be skillfully made and still not worth your conscience — and this one is. Our answer: skip it.

The four young survivors of the last Ghostface killings leave small-town California behind and start over in New York City. Samantha Carpenter, who killed the previous Ghostface, has come to the Big Apple to watch over her younger sister, Tara, now away at college.

Two friends from home follow them, and Tara has made three new friends at school. Then a new masked killer begins stalking, taunting, and attacking them — and reaches back toward familiar faces from their hometown, too. The question becomes whether they can turn the tables. And whether this Ghostface is working alone.

Three stars, and here's what they measure: pure suspense machinery. Where the previous SCREAM sagged, this one keeps you leaning forward. The plot has many twists, and the twists mostly land, even if the ending overstays its welcome.

The franchise even winks at itself: one character explains that the Ghostface saga has become a movie franchise, where each sequel must outdo the last and no one is safe. SCREAM VI dutifully follows that rule — which is exactly why it piles on more blood than any entry before it. Returning faces from the series anchor the mayhem in some continuity. As a thriller, it does its job. What that job costs the viewer is a separate question, and the answer isn't kind.

At its foundation, SCREAM VI carries a light moral worldview: people fight to avoid and defeat a brutal masked killer, and stopping evil is the plot's stated aim. There's a thin thread here of good resisting harm — survivors protecting one another, an older sister shielding a younger one.

But the source is blunt about what buries that thread. Alongside the moral impulse runs a strongly pagan indulgence: the filmmakers pour on bloody mayhem to titillate the audience, more than in any previous film in the franchise. When a movie's method is to thrill you with slaughter, the good intention at the center gets overwhelmed by the spectacle of death. The violence isn't in service of the moral; the moral is a frame for the violence.

That's the tension a discerning viewer can't ignore. Scripture doesn't ask us to pretend evil away, but it does shape what we feed our imaginations. "Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely... think about these things" (Philippians 4:8). A film that stages death for entertainment is working against that grain — however clever its plotting.

Give the craft its due: SCREAM VI is a suspenseful, well-plotted thriller that outdoes its predecessor for tension. But it's also the bloodiest chapter in the series, buried under more than 100 profanities and gore staged to titillate. Skillful or not, the cost is too high — so our answer stands: skip it. For a movie night that won't leave you wincing, start with our latest family-friendly picks.