'Scream VI' Is Stupidly Entertaining, And Jenna Ortega Is A Goddess

Anything Jenna Ortega touches seems to turn to gold.

Every once in awhile, a special actor or actress' career seems to blossom into something truly amazing, when almost no one really expected to. Then, everything he or she appears in seemingly turns to gold, and is loved by critics and the fans alike. It happened to Paul Rudd. It happened to Ryan Reynolds. Now, the same thing seems to be happening to 20-year-old actress Jenna Ortega.

I should really preface this article by saying that on its face, Scream VI is a pretty stupid movie, as you might expect. But it's also surprising in a lot of ways. Scream VI does not deserve to be anywhere near as entertaining as it is.

Jenna Ortega, herself is one of the reasons why this movie is so entertaining, be-it undeservedly. She steals the show with her character, Tara Carpenter, who canonically is the little sister of Melissa Barrera's character, Sam Carpenter, the other standout performance in the film. But with all of Jenna Ortega's appearances in horror movies over the past couple years, and her role as the creepy yet lovable Wednesday Addams in Netflix's Wednesday, she seemingly now carries the title 'scream queen' of the new generation, and there's no competition anywhere in sight. Ortega is a great actress, she's beautiful, and her image just seems to fit like a glove on the screen of a horror film, and has the perfect girlish scream to accompany it.

But as far as Scream VI goes, as you might imagine, even with all its stupidity, it makes for the perfect Friday-night trip to the movie theater with your girlfriend. You'll get exactly what you expect, a slasher flick with lots of blood, gore, and killing. And like any Scream film, you'll get your twist at the end when you find out exactly who the killer(s) is/are.

The music in this movie is really good. The original score was composed by vets Brian Tyler and Sven Faulconer, but also has a few original pop tunes which are absolutely fantastic, and their catchy yet haunting melodies will certainly grab your attention while you're watching the film. And despite them having a modern, poppy sound, the tunes fit very nicely into a slasher flick.

Surprisingly (and thankfully), there's actually not too much wokeness in this film. It does carry over some of the wokeness from the last film, Scream (2022), but it's only there to serve as a continuation of the story in the sequel to the 'requel,' as the characters cleverly and canonically call it in the actual films (if you haven't seen them yet, this reference will make far more sense after you watch them). There's really not much added to it this time around. Maybe Hollywood is starting to take the hint on that front, but I digress...

The ending twist of this movie felt a bit forced, as you might expect for the sixth entry in a franchise that probably should've ended after the third one, at the latest. But that said, it actually was more unpredictable than the last few. (Spoiler alert, kind of) I was actually only able to predict just one of the killers this time around... The writers also did a good job this time of making one of the killers too predictable, in a very clever way which, if you've seen the other Scream movies, you'd probably eliminate as a suspect early on in the film, because the killer wouldn't be this obvious. The writers know how Scream fans think after seeing five of them; they know you know the formula, and they cleverly used that to their advantage...

And of course, no great horror movie would be complete without beautiful women. Samara Weaving looks literally fantastic in her small bit-part at the beginning of the film. Her dress wraps around her body perfectly. Melissa Barrera also looks amazing, as she did in the last film. And then, there's Ms. Ortega. I'm going to lay my cards out on the table here, and say what we're all thinking: Jenna Ortega is hot. She's far and away the sexiest woman in the film, and you'll have a pretty difficult time keeping your eyes off her. The Scream producers sure do know their demo - according to Variety.com, 53% of the opening-weekend audience was male, 67% in the 18-35 age bracket, and 100% was all-eyes-on-Jenna.

In my opinion, this film is worth a watch on the big screen, even though it probably has little rewatch value. Take your girlfriend, buy her popcorn, enjoy your Friday night. She'll thank you for it. Just pray she doesn't get mad when she catches you ogling at Little Miss Ortega.