Scream 6 Star Jenna Ortega Has Good Taste, Thinks You Should Pair New Film With Dario Argento

This article contains spoilers for "Scream VI."

One of the absolute best things about "Scream" as a franchise is how often it acknowledges the masters that came before it. In the original film, John Carpenter's "Halloween" is even given a big chunk of screen time. The series has always paid tribute to the masters of decades past, even when one of those very masters was directing! It's odd that there's a Freddy Krueger nod in the first "Scream" considering that Craven is the director of both, but it's appropriate that Craven himself played the red and green sweater-wearing janitor, "Fred." Somehow that makes it work.

Anyway, the series is at its best when it wears those homages on its sleeve and it's especially cool for genre fans when the cast embraces horror as well. 

Jenna Ortega has been acting forever (did you know she was the president's daughter in "Iron Man 3"? If you didn't, now you do!"), but she really exploded onto the scene with "Scream V," where she was essentially set up to be the early kill that kicks off the new movie, but instead survived and became one of the best characters in this new generation of "Scream" films.

She's very endearing in interviews and one of the key things that comes across when she talks about horror is her deep love and knowledge of the genre, which isn't very typical for a young actor. Yeah, usually they say the prerequisite things about being a fan, but she can deliver the receipts.

Case in point, when "Scream VI" came out she was asked by Bloody Disgusting's Meagan Navarro what classic horror movie would act as a good pairing with it and her response was Dario Argento's legendary giallo "Deep Red," a widely respected movie in the horror community, but something of a deep cut.

Now, "Deep Red" was a 1975 giallo, which is a subgenre of horror that is a close cousin to the North American slasher. You get killer POV, brutal slayings, and, usually, a mystery to be solved. Who is the killer and how can they be stopped? Sometimes there's a supernatural element, but usually, they don't go too crazy into that area, preferring to stick to regular people as their killers. Argento has been known to go pretty wild with these films with some witch stuff and even deformed human killers, but on the whole, they're usually not unkillable boogeymen or hockey mask-wearing zombie slashers.

Now that "Scream VI" has been out for a while, let's talk about why Ortega's suggestion of "Deep Red" as a good double feature title for "Scream VI" is right on the money. Spoilers below for both films, naturally, so proceed at your own risk if you haven't seen either.

First of all, there are two killers in "Deep Red" and they are a mother and a son. The mother is doing most of the killing and the son was so traumatized as a child that he's been in and out of psych wards ever since. But he's taking part, too, and once you see "Scream VI" you know that this one is also a family affair, just twisted a little. It's a dad and his children this time around.

That could be simply a nod to "Scream II" since this is the sequel of the new round of "Scream" films and it probably is, but that doesn't make Argento's twisty-turny giallo any less of a great fit as the second part of a double bill.

The only thing "Scream VI" is missing is a super creepy mechanical doll, but maybe there's room for that in the inevitable "Scream VII."