Set in NYC — but less scary

The scariest part of “Scream VI” isn’t some gory slashing, or a breathy anonymous phone call — it’s when a normal guy taps a woman’s shoulder on a New York City subway platform.  

Who cares if it’s Ghostface or not? Is this lunatic gonna push her onto the tracks?

It’s a fleeting, ripped-from-the-headlines thrill in what’s otherwise a snooze-fest that mechanically rips off what came before it. 

Not to mention that this first “Scream” movie to be set in the city is a total waste of NYC. 

Don’t spend any mental energy trying to figure out what street the characters are running down, what park they’re hiding out in, or what borough it is. This isn’t New York at all — it’s Montreal with some painted signs and trucked-in yellow cabs. 

The movie’s first kill, during a blind date involving a young film studies professor, takes place in a wide alley off of Hudson Street in the Village behind a dumpster. An alley on Hudson Street?

How Ghostface keeps magically appearing and making ominous phone calls in tiny walk-up apartments with paper-thin walls and just a single entrance, who knows? Who cares?

Certainly not directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett.

This might all sound like New York nitpicking — and it is — but the filmmakers acting like the Q in Q Train stands for Quebec is indicative of their carelessness. 

Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett, who directed the 2022 reboot of the franchise, have decided they’ll make little more than silly, nostalgic retreads of the 1990s favorite that don’t need to scare anybody. That’ll be $20, please!

This time, we’ve swapped Woodsboro for the five boroughs because spitfire Tara (Jenna Ortega) is going to college here, to get far away from her traumatic past in California.

Understandable, although personally, I’d take my chances with the serial killer over NYC rent.

Other survivors from the last film such as Chad (Mason Gooding) and Mindy (Jasmin Savoy Brown) have made the trek to Gotham, too. Chad calls the group “the core four.”

And our Sidney Prescott stand-in, Sam (Melissa Barrera) has followed her half-sister Tara to protect her. The trouble for Sam is that after the media coverage of the last Woodsboro murders, conspiracy theorists from coast-to-coast think she’s the one who committed the crimes.

Their boring new pals are Quinn (Liana Liberato), Tara’s nymphomaniac roommate and Ethan (Jack Champion), the boyish pal of Chad. Dermot Mulroney plays Quinn’s dad, who’s also an NYPD detective, and Josh Segarra is Sam’s sexy neighbor Danny, who gets no character development whatsoever.

As the other five films already established, anybody can become Ghostface at any time with the proper motivation.

And so they do.

But instead of finding uniquely New York methods of murder, GF kills the same old way with the same old butcher knives. I’m more afraid of subway platform slashers than this guy.

And that’s the worst thing about these new “Scream” films — they couldn’t spook a kitten.

They’re much more concerned with so-so jokes and overly geeky observations about the horror genre.

Yes, “Scream” always commented on other scary movies, but never so obnoxiously and repetitively as now.

Like the 2022 film, “VI” is written by Guy Busick and James Vanderbilt (you’d think a Vanderbilt would know NYC a bit better!) in an off-puttingly dweebish and self-satisfied manner.

“Nobody just makes sequels anymore — we’re in a franchise!” announces Mindy in a parlor-scene-like moment near the start. “Franchises only survive by subverting expectations.”

It’s all so tedious.

She goes on: “The legacy characters are disposable now!”

A couple of those old-timers are here. Kirby Reed (Hayden Panettiere) from 2011’s “Scream IV” is now a fast-talking, but not confidence-inspiring FBI agent, and Courteney Cox is back again as journalist Gale Weathers, who asks Sam: “Do you think you’re the reason the Ghostface killer came to the Big Apple?”

That should’ve been the crux of the movie. What can Ghostface do in New York? And how can Sam and Tara — Barrera and Ortega are legitimately terrific additions to this series — do to outwit him?

That’s why that subway scene is the only decent three minutes of the film.

After the man touches the woman’s shoulder, she gets on the 1 train at 96th Street on Halloween night.

Her eyes dart around at all the college kids wearing Ghostface masks. The train’s lights flicker, as they always do in real life. People push their way on and off, and one guy stays.

Now, that’s scary.