By almost all accounts, Scream VI has been a big success. Critics were mostly positive, and excited audiences turned out in droves to theaters, resulting in a $44.5 million domestic opening weekend, the largest in the franchise's history. The new cast, first established in last year's Scream, led by the likes of Melissa Barrera and Jenna Ortega, has created a new legacy of characters more than capable of taking the torch handed to them by the ones who carried the films for a quarter of a century.

In this latest entry, we get a Ghostface who is more violent than we've ever seen. We also get a new setting, as the franchise leaves the fictional town of Woodsboro, California behind when our heroes move to New York City to get far away from the horrors they experienced. The Big Apple setting caused a lot of excitement for horror fans. It seemed like the perfect playground for mayhem, but for the most part, Scream VI comes up short in highlighting its setting.

RELATED: ‘Scream VI’ Review: Ghostface Slices Through NYC in This Nostalgia-Filled Blast

'Scream VI' Wasn't Filmed in New York City and We Can Tell

Melissa Barrera and Jenna Ortega in Scream 6
Image via Paramount

When it was first announced that Scream VI would take place in New York City, it took many slasher aficionados back to another famous horror franchise. In 1989, Friday the 13th looked to change things up. All seven of its movies had taken place in Crystal Lake. With the slasher craze starting to wind down, the franchise needed a spark. The eighth film promised to give new life to the undead Jason Voorhees by having him set sail for New York City in Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan. The possibilities seemed endless. Would we get Jason slashing his way through the Empire State Building or the Statue of Liberty, or across the Brooklyn Bridge? Hype turned to disappointment for many when most of the film had Jason on a boat on his way to New York, and when he got there, he stomped through some buildings, alleyways, and subway that were supposed to be New York but were actually filmed in Vancouver. The only great Jason moment in New York came when he walked down a sidewalk in Times Square at night. Outside of that, Jason could have been in any big city. There was nothing much to make it feel like New York City.

Scream VI suffers from that same disappointment. A lot of that comes from making the exact same, dumbfounding mistakes that Friday the 13th made, for much of the newest Scream film isn't filmed anywhere close to New York. Shown prominently in the trailer, and having an integral part in the film, is the scene where Tara (Ortega) and Sam (Barrera) are attacked by a shotgun-wielding Ghostface in a New York City bodega. It's a thrilling scene, but that's not a New York store where the carnage is taking place. Instead, it's a street in Montreal, complete with yellow taxis to make it feel more like the Big Apple. The subway station where the gang encounters dozens of Halloween revelers and one very murderous Ghostface? Yep, that's Montreal too. The same goes for street scenes, school scenes, and apartment scenes. We're being told that this is New York City without showing us New York City.

The production crew does a good job of making the film feel like New York in many scenes. That bodega looks and comes across like a real New York store. The subway feels authentic. The streets and apartment buildings all feel like New York, but they also feel like any big city with brownstone buildings, busy streets, and underground trains. Hollywood so often films in Canada where it's cheaper, but they do so at the detriment of their final product. It's just one more movie trick where we're told that we're seeing one thing when it's something else entirely.

The One Failure of 'Scream VI' Is in Not Showcasing Its Unique Setting

Ghostface holding a shotgun in Scream 6
Image via Paramount

Does that mean that Scream VI needed to completely lean into the New York City vibe and remind us of where we were at with every turn? No. To have Ghostface in every single big landmark would have been overkill that took away from the story. Still, we needed something. Jason Takes Manhattan, despite its many flaws, at least gave us that one iconic shot of the hockey mask-wearing killer in Times Square. Scream VI barely takes us anywhere. There were so many settings to choose from. Any skyscraper from the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, or the World Trade Center. A plethora of bridges that we really only see in establishing shots. Times Square, the Statue of Liberty, Central Park, Rockefeller Center. We didn't need Ghostface running through them all like a New York City Greatest Hits, but at least one or two of them would have added so much, especially for a franchise that winks so much at movie past. If any horror film could have gotten away with an abundance of New York landmark shots, it would have been this one.

In an interview with Slash Film, Scream VI co-director Tyler Gillett said, "We all want to make it different. It's set in New York, let's make it have that New York energy."

Gillett added:

"I think the city had a lot to do with the approach to the character. It felt like with Woodsboro and Windsor College, those locations exist in a bit of a fantasy land. I think that's part of what's fun about what's heightened about those movies. For this one, setting it in a city that is so familiar to people, we had to treat all of that action and all of the violence in a more grounded and terrifying way. Also, there are more obstacles in this movie because it's set in the city, and so you needed a Ghostface that was just brazen and didn't give a f***. In order to be terrifying and exist in those spaces, there had to be a level of brazenness that maybe we haven't seen before."

Gillett is right that the action and violence in the film is bonkers and over the top. The setting doesn't match that intensity. Nothing feels bonkers or over the top about this Montreal stand-in for New York. It's just another of those fantasy lands like Woodsboro or Windsor College. Scream VI has so much going for it, but it missed the boat when it came to highlighting New York. Friday the 13th at least had an excuse. They were a franchise falling on hard times and had a limited budget. That's not Scream. They had the money to show us a love letter to film's most famous city. Instead, we got Canada. New York City might be the city that never sleeps, but here, Scream VI was not aware of what makes New York so special. What will we get when Ghostface inevitably goes to space?