Scream (2022)

I had to check with ChatGPT to find out at the halfway point whether, after all, this 'Scream' was a Scream episode I'd already seen, and when ChatGPT told me this particular one - informally known as Scream V - was made in 2022, features Melissa Barrera as Samantha Carpenter and Jenna Ortega as younger sister Tara and follows a thousand Woodsboro teens being hunted one by one by the masked killer Ghostface, with Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, and David Arquette reprising their legacy character roles as Sidney Prescott, Gale Weathers, and Dewey Riley, respectively, I was none the wiser - except to say I had definitely seen it all before.

★★☆☆☆

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Scream VI (2023)

Just brutally violent, not scary, this sequel to 2022's "rerequel" Scream and the meta-horror series' sixth entry riffs on the idea that Scream is now a mega-franchise with the momentum to continue even without its legacy characters, so Courteney Cox's investigative reporter Gale Weathers (here, again) and other long-timers are apparently at risk of being killed off - it isn't a big point of difference, and other standard elements, like the opening set-piece, are tired, but the mystery elements of Scream VI and a neat sequence on a New York City subway train keep the bloodletting intermittently interesting.

★★★☆☆

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X (2022)

What makes this slasher unique is also, unfortunately, what makes it so tedious: it isn't until the last thirty minutes when grisly death starts being meted out in tried-and-true slasher style that the energy picks up and the heavy-handed exposition (that really only serves to longwindedly establish the lore of all slashers always) finally lets up; it hardly seems to matter (and in fact I didn't even realise until later when I read it) that actress Mia Goth plays both the villain and the heroine.

★★★☆☆

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