Director: Kevin Williamson
Writers: Kevin Williamson, Guy Busick, James Vanderbilt
Stars: Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, Isabel May
Synopsis: When a new Ghostface killer emerges in the town where Sidney Prescott has built a new life, her darkest fears are realized as her daughter becomes the next target.
The next chapter in the Scream franchise is not horrendous. It is certainly not great, just eye-openingly unpleasant and, at times, lazy. The 2022 relaunch recaptured what made the original films clever, addictive, and humorously meta, a rare horror film that was in on the joke and always smarter than its built-in audience. However, the filmmakers never looked down their noses at the fanbase or the genre’s staples.
That’s what makes Scream 7 so disappointing. The madman behind the slasher horror phenomenon, Kevin Williamson (I Know What You Did Last Summer), finally steps behind the camera after writing the original thirty years ago. Williamson co-wrote the script with Guy Busick, whose breakout script for Ready or Not, like Scream decades earlier, reinvented the horror genre with staggering results.
Yet, Scream 7 has no laughs, comic relief, or magnetic appeal. The slasher scenes are tepid, lacking cleverness, and settling for brute brutality without emotional stakes. The plotting is vapid, the tone is all over the place, and the self-referential humor is now a distant memory. The final product is hubristic, displaying an unearned confidence rooted in the names on the marquee and an intellectual property that has reached creative exhaustion.
Another point of contention is that the opening scene, a franchise staple, does nothing to set up the movie other than serve as a red herring. A true-crime superfan, Scott (Jimmy Tatro), and his girlfriend, Madison (Landman’s Michelle Randolph), visit the site of the gruesome murders at Stu Macher’s (The Life of Chuck’s Matthew Lillard) residence. Scott retells a rumor that Stu may still be alive, roaming the area after having his head smashed in by a television set.
The scene is lazy, not to mention narratively untethered, creating a hollow inciting tease. (After watching the movie, you’ll understand there is no reason for the sequence to exist.) This leads to the return of Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell), who is raising her family in Pine Grove. Sidney is married to Mark (Joel McHale) and is trying to keep their daughter, Tatum (Isabel May), from letting her boyfriend (The Fabelmans’ Sam Rechner) sneak into the house at night.
From there, the film becomes rinse-and-repeat well past the point of nostalgia. Sidney receives a phone call from Ghostface. There is a slight twist here that I will skip to avoid spoilers. The infamous villain tells their old friend that they are about to murder her daughter at school. The script still operates on the basic principle that, in this day and age, no cloud-based surveillance systems, cell phone tracking, or even plain old locks on doors exist.
There are very few surprises in the latest chapter of Scream, which had to find a new trajectory after Melissa Barrera was let go after social media posts about the Israel-Hamas war, and Jenna Ortega left after the franchise pivot. That would be like taking the original without Sydney and Gale Weathers (Courtney Cox). The result is a paint by the bloody numbers brutality that does not have nearly enough fun with the script as it should.
Williamson and Busick’s script settles into a tired rhythm. They set up a killing, insert nostalgic callbacks to previous chapters, then repeat. All scenes are so loosely connected, the film unfolds like a first draft, or so is chopped from cast changes, comes across as stitched together storyboard. In addition, the big reveal of who the killer is is easily the biggest letdown and is nothing more than a tribute-killing trope.
The ending combines two clichés from hour-long dramas. First, if you’ve watched movies as long as I have, you know that when a recognizable actor from the 2000s appears in a small role, they’re part of the plot. Then there’s the eye-rolling reveal of a close family friend, which is something anyone can see coming. It’s remarkable how little thought went into the execution, with ineptitude masked by one gruesome killing.
Scream 7 is a chapter that betrays the slasher thriller’s legacy. A franchise that taught multiple generations how to survive a horror film now outlines how to leave one behind, and without regret.
You can watch Scream 7 only in theaters starting February 27th!
