Scream VI

It's tough to carry on after losing your heart. Scream VI is the first without original survivor Sidney Prescott, who was the core of the series for 26 years. In many ways this film feels her loss, but new franchise guardians Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett conjure up enough inventive kills and clever ideas to convince that Scream could, like many horror sagas, have a life beyond its foundational cast.

"Scream VI," while it goes on for too long, is a pretty good thriller. It's a homicidal shell game that's clever in all the right ways, staged and shot more forcefully than the previous film, eager to take advantage of its more sprawling but enclosed cosmopolitan setting.