I was really happy to be able to see this movie in a double bill showing along with Scream 5. While the character of Sidney wasn’t going to appear in this movie at all (which was very disappointing), the two characters I liked the most from Scream 5 (Sam and Tara) were in this movie, which was really good.
The opening of this movie seemed very predictable, with a woman waiting for her date in a bar, getting a phone call and then ending up walking down a dark alleyway…which, of course, ends with her getting murdered. And then the predictable scene ends with the murderer removing his Ghostface mask, revealing himself to be a student of the teacher he’d just murdered, ‘practicing’ in preparation for him and his accomplice to murder Sam and Tara.
And ultimately, a new and different Ghostface kills the student, which results in Sam’s driving licence being left at the scene, making her a person of interest in this new spree of murders.
Once again, the relationship between Sam and her sister is one of the best parts of this movie. Even though there is tension between them, due to Sam wanting to protect Tara, there’s also that need from Tara to protect Sam in return; from cutting off their mother when she did the same to Sam, to punching Gale in the face…which is a nice nod to the original movie, while still adding something new to the scene.
It was good to see Mindy and Chad make an appearance in this movie as well and one thing that was really good was seeing the way the four of them handled being the survivors from Scream 5; the Core Four, as Chad called it. And speaking of Chad, I thought he had a lot more depth in this movie than he did in the previous one. It was really good to see the gradual forming of a relationship between him and Tara. I appreciated the slow burn, rather than them immediately jumping into bed together, especially considering how few movies have anything building before the main character jumps into bed with their love interest.
The use of the previous Ghosface masks and costumes was quite good and a way of building tension, making it unclear exactly what connection the new Ghostface killers had with the previous murder sprees. And adding a whole new level of tension to this movie was the fact that the rumours about Sam claimed that she was the one responsible for killing Richie and Amber from the previous movie. In theory, the fact that there were three survivors of the previous massacre should have allowed those rumous to be quashed…but then again, it seems like Gale (who never learns her lesson) was at least partially responsible for those rumours. And it just made me dislike her character even more. I seriously don’t like her.
It was really good to see Kirby make an appearance in this movie, as she was a great character in Scream 4, and I liked seeing her interactions with Mindy, since they’re quite similar in their love for horror movies. And Mindy was just a great character all round, especially with her listing off all the potential suspects.
This movie was pretty gruesome in the death scenes, but I can’t really say it was much worse than the previous Scream movies. Some of the scenes had a lot of tension in them and I was definitely on the edge of my seat, waiting to see if the characters I cared about were going to survive or not. As Mindy pointed out, no one was safe in this movie.
This movie was really good and entertaining. Again, it was predictable, but the main characters definitely made this movie worth watching. If there is a Scream 7 coming out, I really hope that Tara, Sam and Mindy will have a lot of focus on them.
Ink of Blood 