“Shoot ’em in the head!”, warns eternal final girl Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) to her teen daughter Tatum (Isabel May) in Scream 7, as a means of ensuring that the masked Ghostface is indeed dead. It’s perhaps time someone do the same to this venerable, 30-year-old horror franchise, which has lived many different lives over the course of that time. Once a brilliant riff on tired horror tropes, it became the plucky veteran, tired retread, then got a killer reboot in 2022 that breathed new life with a slew of popular characters. But the leads of those films are both gone, and the lazy attempt to continue on is like one of Ghostface’s victims, stabbed in the gut and bleeding out, crawling to a safety they’ll never reach.
It’s tough to understand how Scream 7 could be such a dismal failure. The film is written by franchise stalwart Kevin Williamson and directed by him for the first time. It’s his first gig behind the camera since Teaching Mrs. Tingle, a buzzy high school thriller that arrived in 1999. Presumably, Williamson understands the mechanics of these movies more than anyone, but it’s rarely ever seen.
It used to be that nostalgia was a thing that Scream mocked; now it’s the only thing the latest chapter has to rely on. Neve Campbell, who ditched the previous movie due to a lowball offer, returns after a reported $7M payday. Sidney has found a new life for herself in a small town, far away from the nightmares she faced in Woodsboro. Her eldest daughter Tatum (Isabel May), named after Sidney’s murdered childhood friend (played then by Rose McGowan), wants to know more about her mom’s experiences, but Sidney is reluctant to share her trauma. That’s understandable, but it causes friction between the two, and the only thing that can bring them together is a new Ghostface killer in town stalking them both. Sidney’s husband (Joel McHale) is the local police chief, so presumably, he could help keep them safe, right? Wrong; men are either useless or evil in these movies, or have you forgotten?
To be fair, there are some delightfully gory kills that entertain more than the pathetically weak storyline. It’s not Scream without a nasty opening murder, and this one begins with a cleverly staged massacre set at a replica of Stu Macher’s home from the original, full of mock animatronic Ghostfaces, body outlines, fake murder weapons, and, of course, one all-too-real killer on the loose. There is also what might be the deadliest killing spree in a single sequence, in which most of the red herring characters are wiped out gruesomely in the span of a few minutes. But that’s just it. There’s no tension in Scream 7 and little mystery.
Deaths mean less than nothing this time around, which is probably why the body count is so high and the kills a bit more extreme. The lame characters surrounding Sidney and Tatum is the major problem. Courteney Cox returns as newswoman Gale Weathers, who has endured Ghostface attacks as long as Sidney. We also see the returns of Mason Gooding and Jasmin Savoy Brown as siblings Chad and Mindy, survivors of the previous two movies, tagging along like stale reminders of what might’ve been if Melissa Barrera hadn’t been unceremoniously fired, and if Jenna Ortega hadn’t ducked out right behind her. Barrera and Ortega, who played the Ghostface’s new targets the Carpenter sisters, brought a spark that is sorely missing this time around. McKenna Grace, Celeste O’Connor, Asa Germann, and Sam Rechner are glossy and good looking, but none of them will make the list of this franchise’s most memorable portrayals.
Campbell, however, continues to play Sidney Prescott like the badass that she is. There are some funny exchanges about her absence from the previous movie, but the most compelling development with Sidney is that she hasn’t changed all that much other than being a protective mama bear. She doesn’t want Tatum to have to go through what she’s been through, but when it boils down to it, Sidney is still leaping into danger the way she always has. It’s clear the goal is to, once again, pass the torch to a new generation of survivors, but let’s be real in that Sidney is the character we keep showing up for. I say that, but 2022’s Scream 6 was the franchise’s highest earning film domestically without Campbell anywhere near it. But I also think that was partly out of curiosity to see where things would go without her.
Williamson denies a larger meta narrative in favor of a more streamlined slasher narrative, which makes the sloppy reveal all the more confounding. There has never been a Ghostface as forgettable as this. Even the inclusion of AI as a component of the slaughter is pointless, something done to make Scream 7 seem like it still has relevance. I’m afraid it doesn’t. Shoot it in the head and be done with it.
Scream 7 is open in theaters now.
