LATEST SCREAM FILM IS MORE OF THE SAME, AGAIN, AGAIN

This killer doesn’t last long –there are plenty of murderous teens carrying on the legacy of the first Ghostface killer from all the way back in 1996.

seem to make up his mind over whether he’s shooting an out-and-out B-movie comedy horror in the vein of Troma Entertainment, or a surreal update of Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the film’s clearest visual reference.

Whichever it is, he fails. The acting is uniformly bad, and not in a so-bad-it’sgood way, more a bottom-of-the-classdrama-undergrad way. It’s also bafflingly unimaginative, rehashing the same handful of horror movie shots – the killer appearing in negative space, tight shots of the victims that obviously hide the giant yellow bear just out of frame.

There’s also a lot of queasy, unreformed sexploitation that serves no purpose other than to shock. When Pooh grapples one girl, her shirt immediately tears off. Moments later another girl sexy-dances alone in her room wearing just a bikini. And it’s one thing to see your favourite childhood character feeding a live victim into a wood chipper, but it’s somehow far worse watching him repeatedly slap a bound woman across the face. But Blood and Honey isn’t bad because it’s shocking, it’s bad because it’s lazy – it’s a poorly conceived, poorly shot, poorly acted hotch-potch of ideas and styles that’s a disservice to all involved, not least Pooh.

Scream VI begins with a familiar refrain: a phone ringing. It then continues a familiar refrain, rehashing the same plot points, characterisation, and exact conversations from the previous five instalments.

The original Wes Craven film was a genuine masterpiece, repositioning the lumbering slasher movie as a smart, self-referential pop-culture touchstone that would spawn a thousand imitators.

But over the course of four sequels, the franchise stopped being a comment on horror movies as a whole, and started being a comment only on itself. Everything in Scream VI –the sequel to Scream, which was the sequel to Scream IV –is a reference to a reference to a reference, a photocopy of a photocopy that becomes slightly less legible each time.

It begins, of course, with the murder of a pretty young woman –this time a professor of film studies who specialises in the “outsider art” of slasher movies. She’s lured into an alley and stab, stab, stab, yada, yada, yada. But there’s a twist... the killer immediately pulls off his mask. He’s a film nerd recreating the work of the last film nerd who was recreating the work of... You get the idea. An entire bag of snakes eating their own tails.

The previous instalment established a new group of young survivors –the “core four” –although as we’re explicitly told, several times, any one of them could be the killer, and absolutely everybody is expendable. We’re well into franchise territory here, after all.

Not returning is Neve Campbell, the original damsel in distress, following a dispute over pay. This leaves Courtney Cox’s Gale Weathers as the primary member of the original line-up, and it remains a nostalgic thrill to see her back on screen.

Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett both return to the director’s chairs, and they’re well versed enough in the rules of this universe to put together a perfectly serviceable Scream movie. It’s funny where it should be funny, tense where it should be tense, and it rattles along at a speed that never leaves you enough time to wonder if it’s really worth watching all this for a sixth time.

In fairness, nobody really expected Nightmare on Elm Street 6 (Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare) or Friday the 13th 6 (Jason Lives) to be any good –and why should this be any different? It’s a testament to the cultural impact of the first film that there’s still demand for more, and this Diet Coke version of Scream still hits the spot, albeit only briefly.

RECOMMENDED

MEET ME IN THE BATHROOM DIR: WILL LOVELACE, DYLAN SOUTHERN BY VICTORIA LUXFORD

Spanning a ten-year period between the turn of the millennium and the early 2010s, Meet Me In The Bathroom looks at the rise of the New York indie rock scene. Charting the arrival of bands including The Strokes, Interpol, and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, it also introduces the venues, fledgling companies, and fans that made their noise heard around the world. In what will perhaps become more of

BY ADAM BLOODWORTH

James Bond fans don’t make as much noise as other fandoms. They’re barely heard against the racket of Star Wars and Marvel obsessives, who dress up and quote each other. Perhaps that’s because Bond fans are chasing more sophisticated pleasures.

One such pleasure is the new James Bond-themed cocktail menu at Baccarat bar at Harrods. Six cocktails have been made from a special whisky blend by Macallan, now partners with EON Productions who make the Bond films.

Baccarat Bar is certainly a sophisticated pleasure. All alarming reds and panels of mirrored glass, it’s decked out with so many shiny-pretty fittings it feels like sitting down might ruin the Feng shui.

It is here where the new Bond cocktails are served on jet black menus designed for a fun little game of espionage-lite. I’m given a torch and learn that shining it on the page reveals the hidden list.

I’ve had my spy moment, but now I’m ready for my cocktail. They include ingredients such as black cardamom, ginger, fermented spices, and split coffee milk liqueur, along with a dream of the special James Bond blend. I try a ‘Decade V’, which is described as full bodied, complex and balanced. I’ve always fancied being complex and balanced, plus the noughties –the fifth decade of the Bonds –was the decade of my teens, when I first drank.

It’s sweet, with a sherbet lemon vibe. It opens out into something with a much warmer mouthfeel, with notes of spice and marzipan. My drink is served in a tall, elegant glass handmade by the Macallan team over a whopping 48 hours.

The Bond whisky has already sold out in the store upstairs, and bottles of it are going for £3,000 online, quite the mark-up from the £700 sale price.

“They’re not going near a cask less than eight years old,” a barman tells me of Macallan’s blending process while I drink. Made “a bit like a phe-