Has there ever been a movie franchise that knew when to retire? Of course, the whole concept of a franchise suggests dragging a hit concept to its withered end.

Despite polished production values Scream VI tediously tugs a dying notion through the celluloid, but not before finding new ways to defy logic.

Another current and successful franchise, The Fast & Furious & Friends seemingly makes more money the more ridiculous the stories become. That series started with muscle-car racing, then saw actors hopping to and from the roofs of speeding cars on freeways, and then evolved with cars flying to outer space.

Likewise, Scream VI allows Ghostface to kill with a shotgun and characters to shrug off being knifed in vital organs. One scene has a victim, who was stabbed deep in the abdomen in the previous scene, pop up and run around like internal injuries are no big deal.

Brendan Fraser in The Whale stated that he could be stabbed with a kitchen knife and suffer little inconvenience because he had so much fat that the blade wouldn’t penetrate his body, proper. Rules don’t apply to the willowy and svelte bodies of the main characters of Scream VI.

They begrudgingly call themselves “the core four,” and if you count the power to immediately recover from stab wounds, they indeed are like a group of superheroes. The quartet consisting of Melissa Barrera, Jasmin Savoy Brown, Mason Gooding, and Jenna Ortega moved from Woodsboro, California to New York City because they thought they would be safer.

Of this gang it’s really Ortega who deserves the most accolades since in the last year she captured the cultural zeitgeist by having her Wednesday Cramps dance go viral. It’s been seen by everybody on Earth. There’s not another current actor who can claim that trophy.

It would be customary to go through a bullet list of plot points but every single thread of Scream VI manages to contain spoiler content.

Will the Scream franchise retire at the sixth iteration? After all, one of the greatest run of sequels, The Thin Man series, tapped out at number six.

Not likely, since Scream VI is getting rave reviews due to excessive gore. It’s the bloodiest one yet, with the most consecutive stabbing motions. When they rate movies, a sex scene is judged on the number of thrusts, but slasher films don’t have to adhere to such silly regulations.