Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) is back to contend with her legacy as the reigning Ghostface slayer in Scream 7, a sequel so determined to bring the franchise full circle that it seems to harbor animosity for its direct predecessor, Scream VI. Original Scream screenwriter Kevin Williamson is back, this time as director, along with many of the familiar signatures and faces of a Scream movie, a move directly at odds with the seventh installment’s anti-nostalgia sentiment. And that might be the least of its problems.
Scream 7 gets off to a rousing start with a blazing sendoff to Woodsboro before narrowing its focus to Sidney’s new life in a quaint little town as a coffee shop owner and an overprotective mom to a pouting teen, Tatum (Isabel May). She’s even married to the town sheriff, Mark (Joel McHale). Sidney’s resolute determination to shield her daughter from her past traumas creates friction between the pair, which only becomes exacerbated when Ghostface resurfaces and targets Tatum and her friends.
That means there are two generations up for slaughter this time, with Ghostface targeting both Sidney and Tatum, along with anyone close to them. The franchise maintains its streak for strong casting, but newcomers like McKenna Grace, Asa Germann, Celeste O’Connor, and Sam Rechner don’t get much to do in a sequel that only really has eyes for Sidney. Except become Ghostface fodder or a suspect, of course. But the acute fixation on Sidney leaves the suspect list surprisingly short.
If you thought Scream VI‘s unmasking was easy to predict, well, Scream 7 makes even less of an attempt to preserve the mystery for the third-act reveal. So much so that Sidney and Gale (Courteney Cox, who makes a triumphant entrance here) wind up looking far less intelligent than this franchise has established them to be in their attempts to sniff out their latest culprit. Gale brings Chad and Mindy Meeks (Mason Gooding and Jasmin Savoy Brown) in tow without a word about the Core Four’s other half, the most egregious slight in Williamson and Guy Busick‘s script that’s so determined to remind us over and over again that Sidney sat out the events of New York.
The good news is that Ghostface’s old tactics are arguably as brutal as ever, with a few notable gnarly kills that splatter guts or brain matter. Williamson retains a strong grasp of crafting nerve-fraying set pieces as Ghostface wastes no time launching into stalk-and-slash attacks, putting Sidney immediately into survival mode. The bad news is the introduction of Ghostface’s new tactic: AI unmasking to taunt Sidney via FaceTime calls. I won’t spoil the details, but this plot thread culminates in the weakest third act of the entire franchise.
Scream 7‘s convoluted ruminations on legacy and nostalgia get contradicted in a climax that trots out the callbacks and cameos to remind us of franchise history right before unmasking the series’ most annoying and pointless killers yet, thanks to confusing and silly motives that highlight this sequel’s penchant for scattershot ideas and a sense of randomness. For as much shade as it throws at VI, Scream 7 has no qualms about borrowing its tendency to unleash punishing mortal wounds that are somehow, impossibly, survivable. At least for those lucky enough to be shielded by Sidney’s plot armor, anyway.
Not everything frustrates. Isabel May is a breath of fresh air as the timid daughter of a hardened survivor, one desperate to live up to mom’s legacy but even more so to understand it. Flashes of personality spring forth in scenes where Sidney coaches her daughter through vicious attacks, in a film that takes itself far too seriously. The conflict between mom and daughter offers a compelling emotional core, especially as it deftly skirts around the overly-tired theme of inherited trauma, but it’s often overshadowed by underdeveloped concepts of legacy, toothless AI commentary, and slasher mechanics in a film filled with characters making the exact dumb choices that Wes Craven‘s original classic lampooned.
The Scream films built their reputation on smart meta-horror commentary and surprising killer reveals, centered around a Final Girl so resilient that, as a character points out early, anyone else would’ve been sent to a mental institution by now. Campbell and Cox, along with newcomer May and director Williamson’s talents for suspense, carry this installment far. But not nearly far enough to compensate for what ultimately feels like a corporate rush job so hollow and devoid of identity that it calls the franchise’s future into question.
We’re now at a stage where you can pluck the killer out of a lineup far ahead of its savvier survivors, and the films are without much to say on the genre itself. Worse, the franchise seems to be succumbing to the tired tropes it so humorously and lovingly poked fun at in the first place. Still, there are enough thrills and chills injected, at least until its abysmal finale, to signal that there’s a faintly beating pulse buried somewhere under the mess.
Scream 7 is now playing in theaters.
