Scream 6 has received the best Rotten Tomatoes score for the franchise since the early days in the late 1990s. The film, which is a direct follow-up to the fifth film, 2022's Scream, tracks the story of the core four survivors of the previous film, formerly estranged sister Sam (Melissa Barrera) and Tara Carpenter (Jenna Ortega) and twins Chad (Mason Gooding) and Mindy Meeks-Martin (Jasmin Savoy Brown). They have moved from Woodsboro, California to New York City, where a brand new Ghostface killer arises, forces them to team up with other survivors Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox) and Kirby Reed (Hayden Panettiere) to find out the killer's identity.
The Rotten Tomatoes score for the buzzy Scream 6 has been released, revealing that the film is standing solid at a Fresh 77 percent. While there will still be some more reviews coming in over the weekend that change the score slightly, at the time of writing there are already 106 reviews compiled so there likely won't be much movement in either direction. Not only is this the third-best score for the entire franchise, it's the highest since 1997's Scream 2 hit a franchise peak with 82 percent.
Very Few Horror Franchises Are As Consistently Loved as Scream
While Scream 6 has the best score of the franchise, many of the sequels also have strong ratings. It is just one percent ahead of Scream 2022's 76 percent score. Scream 4 also turned out a solid 60 percent, right on the edge of fresh, making 2000's trilogy-capper Scream 3 the only Rotten entry at 41 percent.
Even if none of these films have reached the height of critical darling status as classic like Halloween or The Exorcist, it is a rare horror franchise in two major ways. The proportion of Fresh entries vs Rotten entries, for one, is astounding. Many long-running slasher franchises have many more Rotten films than not, like Halloween (which has two Fresh films out of 13), Friday the 13th (which has one Fresh film out of 12) or A Nightmare on Elm Street (which has three Fresh films out of nine).
Scream 6 also holds the rare distinction of a sixth entry in a franchise not only being fresh but having a competitive score with the original film and its first sequel. Most horror franchises that last long enough to reach six entries, including the likes of Paranormal Activity, The Amityville Horror, and The Conjuring, have their sixth entries ranked much closer to the bottom than the top. This speaks to the enduring power of the Ghostface formula, which blends humor, horror, and a compelling whodunit for a winning combination more often than not.
Source: Rotten Tomatoes
