Lacks Guts [SPOILERS - naturally]

I saw this last night, and I really enjoyed it as a thriller/whodunnit in the mould of the other Scream installments (as a big fan of the franchise), but, for all the film's many strengths, the ending was frustrating, and basically part of a legacy trend (which I doubt the supposedly self-aware and genre-savvy characters will acknowledge in the next film), which was also a big issue for me with Jurassic Park: Dominion; and that's the ludicrous 'plot armour' the main characters seem to have, even when, in this case, they are stabbed, slashed, knocked about and pummelled, as much as any of the 'cannon-fodder' supporting characters.

The so-called Core Four *as well as* Gale Weathers *and* legacy returnee, Kirby, all managed to somehow, ludicrously, survive, even though Chad and Gale were particularly close to death's door, Chad especially, and it would have raised the stakes for the next film, and shown us that NO character was immune from death if the filmmakers had shown the guts to kill off at least one of them (Chad's survival seemed particularly unnecessary and unlikely).

I did like that Danny, the new 'hot' guy, survived (although I suspect he'll be one of the first to go next time), so at least it wasn't *only* the main characters/legacy returnees who made it out alive, but really, horror/slasher filmmakers shouldn't be so sentimental.

Also, at the risk of causing offence, there is a slightly irritating, underlying 'woke' subtext to who does and doesn't survive (and who the villains are). Yes, one Black guy dies (but he's practically a background character who doesn't have a line of dialogue, despite being Gale's new boyfriend), as does the apparent Asian-American lesbian girlfriend, but it's noticeable that all the survivors, save for Gale and Kirby (and they meet the requisite 'Girl Power'/career women criteria), are minorities (i.e. biracial/Black or Hispanic), and two of the villains are a white cop and his incel son.

And yes, before the 'woke' defenders snipe back, it *is* a problem, because in a film like this it should be random/completely surprising who lives and who dies, but if a character has 'minority armour' it arguably undermines the tension (just as it was always the Black dude who was the first to die in a horror film, which was itself extremely problematic, now it's "Oh, they're Black or Hispanic. They've got decent odds of surviving.") I'm not sure how anyone could disagree in this context.