Jenna Ortega is set to spend a few hours running away from movie villain Ghostface as part of the Scream cast in the slasher movie sequel Scream 6, but she’s desperate for teen movies to credit young people with some more intelligence.
The star, who recently played the lead role in The Addams Family TV series Wednesday, has a vested interest in making sure new movies make teens look smart. After all, she plays so many of them and was one herself until last year.
It’s a cliché of horror movies that the young people who fall victim to the madness and mutilation of horror villains aren’t particularly clever, but Ortega reckons that ought to change.
During her interview on the YouTube series Hot Ones, Ortega reflected on some of the young characters she has played. In 2022, she became a rare Ghostface survivor when her character made it past the Scream 5 ending.
“I think for me, because I look a bit younger, I’ve been acting for a little over a decade now, so I’ve just been a teenager pretty much in stories. I feel like it’s always the ‘bratty teen,’ the ‘bad-mouthed teen,’ or a lot of times ‘unintelligent,’ which I don’t think is true,” said Ortega.
She added: “I think it’s hard too, nowadays with all this new lingo coming around but I feel like my generation, because there is so much accessible to them on the internet, there’s just more opportunities for them to learn. I wish they were given a bit more credit. We can be smart sometimes.”
So here’s hoping that Ortega gets her wish and we start to see some clever teens on the big screen. Ortega now sets her sights on the Wednesday season 2 release date after the Wednesday ending teed up a second season.
Elsewhere, horror fans have plenty of 2023 movies to enjoy after Scream 6, including the Renfield release date and the Evil Dead Rise release date.