Now I'm the one contributing to delinquencies, and other Scream VI thoughts

I've written at various times in the past about the movies my kids have been exposed to before we thought they were ready. I think I mentioned the time my older son sat in on a viewing of The Suicide Squad -- the really violent James Gunn one from two years ago -- when we were over for a dinner party in my wife's friend group, where each of the families has a child around my son's age, though in their case it's the youngest son while ours is the oldest. I know I didn't mention, because it only happened about a month ago, when he watched American Psycho under the same circumstances.

Well, we had a dinner party at our house on Saturday night, so I thought it was my chance to return the favor.

Of course the four 12- and 13-year-old boys wanted something aspirational, and it was clear my usual recommendation of a handful of Marvel movies was getting no traction. It was my own son, though, who was fixated on the idea of Scream VI.

Even though he's never seen a Scream movie, my son does have a history with the franchise. We came into possession of a Ghostface mask, and he's worn it on multiple Halloweens. Then last year on our trip to America, he sat next to me as I watched last year's Scream reboot on the plane. He asked questions and I'm sure saw selected images from it, and I know it lived on in his curiosity, fascination and probably deep-seated fears.

Having already planted the seed myself, through both the plane viewing and the mask purchase, it was obvious I was going to comply with his request -- especially since getting a kid to agree on a movie when his friends are over is a victory in and of itself.

Plus in the back of my head I had the fact that my younger son, who is still only nine, has friends who have told him they've seen The Exorcist, which is far more graphic than the umpteenth Scream movie. 

None of them stumbled out of the garage two hours later with any apparent scars, and I'm guessing the other three, who all have older siblings, have already seen a lot worse. (One could argue that both The Suicide Squad and American Psycho are a lot worse, and those are only the ones I know they've seen.) 

My own son seemed fine too. He acknowledged it was violent but he reminded me "I've seen American Psycho." 

When I watched it myself later, the rental having promoted it to the top of my viewing queue when otherwise I might not have seen it until October for Halloween, I was trying to figure out which there are more of: f-bombs or stab wounds. 

Did I watch movies like this when I was 12? I don't think so. I was not naturally drawn to horror as a younger viewer. By 12 I might have been trying to see R-rated movies that had boobs -- I can't remember exactly when that started -- but teenagers being chopped up was not a priority for me. Unless, maybe, they showed their boobs before being chopped up, which was much more of a thing back then. 

Every parent knows that today's kids grow up faster than they did, and whether that's actually true or not, there's no doubt we believe it. Even my wife, who tends to be a bit more careful with things like this, sort of shrugged when I told her our son wanted to watch Scream VI. She later told me it was because she considered it more horror comedy, which I don't think the Scream series really is -- at least not anymore. Sure they try to get a laugh here and there, but it feels more like typical serial killer drudgery to me nowadays. Which brings me to my next point ...

Scream and Saw are basically the same thing

Now that we have six Scream movies, it is becoming more evident that this series has quite a lot in common with the most enduring horror series of the 21st century, the Saw movies. I believe there are nine of those, though if it was double digits I wouldn't be surprised.

Consider:

1) Both series have an incredibly serpentine mythology that continues to revisit characters from earlier in the series who are presumed dead, or even if they actually are dead they still loom large over the proceedings.

2) Both series are founded on the idea of copycats continuing to carry on the work of the original killer(s).

3) Both series have an idea of who "deserves" to be killed based on some previous crimes of which they are guilty. 

4) In both series, the original killer is known for the sound of his voice in either pre-recorded messages or live telephone calls, and the exact timbre, vocal ticks, favorite turns of phrase or indications of sadism of the voice can be reproduced by multiple copycats despite them possibly never having heard the original voice, because most of the people who did hear that voice ended up dead.

5) Both series are utterly exhausted at this point. Having liked the reboot of Scream last year -- or "requel," as the characters in this film refer to it -- I felt pretty put off by Scream VI. No, I definitely do not think it's clever any more the way these films are relentlessly self aware, and try to give us credit by winking to us about what they're doing and then doing that very thing. At this point this is really just pandering, and I'm tired of it. In a way, Saw at least has a certain purity in that it presents the material more straightforwardly, without the equivalent of Murtaugh saying "I'm too old for this shit" in all the Lethal Weapon movies. Scream is basically nothing but that.

Perfect pauses: Scream VI

SPOILER ALERT if you care about who the killer was in Screams 1 through 5. 

In one of the many times I paused the movie -- which were a lot, since I was tired and a little drunk after the aforementioned dinner party, meaning I finished the movie Sunday afternoon -- I happened to randomly catch the exact screen shot to show who the killer was in every previous Scream movie.

I've warned you once, now I will warn you again: Don't continue reading or looking down this page if you want to be kept ignorant of this information.

Here was the perfect pause in question:

Now, this was actually a spoiler for me since I haven't seen Scream 3 or Scream 4 -- and in a way, since I remember so little about Scream 2. 

At first I was annoyed, and thought that if I hadn't paused it at this exact moment, the information might have gone in one ear and out the other and I might have just been able to ignore it. They continue to talk about all these past killers, but hearing their names wouldn't have been something I would have remembered on a potential future viewing of Scream 3 or Scream 4. The faces are the things that stick with me, especially if you recognize them. (Hello, Scott Foley -- it's been a while.)

But then I thought: Given how over this series I am, what are the chances I am going to go back and watch Scream 3 or 4 -- ever?

Yeah, we know my stated goal is to watch every movie that's ever been made. But just between you and me, I doubt that's ever actually going to happen.