Scream 7 arrives mired in controversy, thanks to its decision to ditch the narrative arc set up by its predecessors—a course correction spurred by the firing of Melissa Barrera and the subsequent departure of co-lead Jenna Ortega and director Christopher Landon.
Yet from any rational perspective, that’s a tempest in a teapot, since Scream (5) and Scream VI were dreadful sequels whose lack of resourcefulness and thrills made them the franchise’s lamest installments and further sullied Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson’s once-clever meta riff on the slasher genre.
Taking things in a new direction is thus, in theory, as likely to revitalize the horror series as hewing to its recent (awful) path. Alas, resorting to nostalgia is hardly an inspired way to go, and Scream 7 (Feb. 27, in theaters) goes that way with such gusto that it underscores the lengths to which studios will mine IPs even after every last drop of creativity has been squeezed from their formula.
Sluggish, unscary, and plagiaristic in not-ingenious ways, it’s definitive proof that it’s time to retire Ghostface and his gravely hackneyed games.
Don’t worry if you can’t remember what happened in the last two Scream outings, because save for a few wink-wink references, this latest chapter—co-written and directed by original scribe Williamson—ignores them.
There are innumerable inside-baseball nods littered throughout Scream 7, beginning with a trademark intro sequence in which a fiend in a Ghostface costume stalks cocky innocents, the sole twist being that in this case, the slaughter takes place in a tourist-trap mock-up of the Macher home where so much blood was previously shed.
While that opening salvo is in Woodsboro, Scream 7 situates itself in Pine Grove, Indiana, where final girl Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell, back in the fold after skipping out on Scream VI) is trying to live a quiet life out of the spotlight as a coffee shop owner.
Unsurprisingly, that’s impossible, given that everyone—including true-crime obsessive Lucas (Gen V’s Asa Germann), who lives next door with his mom Jessica (Anna Camp)—knows everything about her and the Stabmovies based on her ordeals. The only person who isn’t up on Sidney lore is her 17-year-old daughter, Tatum (Isabel May), who’s frustrated that her mom has never opened up about her infamous past.
Sidney and Tatum’s squabbling is refereed by the former’s police chief husband, Mark (Joel McHale), who’s less concerned than his wife about the fact that their daughter is dating a guy, Ben (Sam Rechner), who sneaks into her bedroom via the window à la Sidney’s homicidal flame Billy Loomis (Skeet Ulrich).
Scream 7’s early going has Sidney fretting about whether her over-protectiveness has made Tatum less safe, and her fears turn out to be well-founded once things take a routine turn into the grim and gory via a FaceTime call from an old friend: Stu Macher (Matthew Lillard).
This is astonishing because Stu perished alongside his killer BFF Billy in the first Scream, and Sidney and everyone else promptly assume that this is the work of an imposter in deep-fake disguise. Nonetheless, Scream 7 vainly attempts to maintain some is-it-or-isn’t-it mystery as it plods from one slaying to another, most of them involving Tatum’s friends, a bunch of teenagers who function as either generic victims or, just as predictably, potential suspects—a possibility that Tatum, at least initially, refuses to believe.
Fans know this routine backwards and forwards, as does Williamson, and yet the most startling aspect of Scream 7 is its inability to create any guessing-game suspense. The film’s red herrings and misdirections are painfully obvious, such that it becomes difficult not to expect an inevitable out-of-left-field bombshell.
Still, before any such assumptions can be verified, Sidney is first put through a personal and maternal gauntlet by both Stu, who keeps calling to taunt her, as well as the individual in the Ghostface get-up, whose skill with a knife is only overshadowed by his (or her) ability to take an enormous licking and keep on ticking.
Scream 7 strains to be as meta as its ancestors, piling on references to hallowed horror classics (A Nightmare on Elm Street, The People Under the Stairs, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Friday the 13th) and its franchise brethren. Per tradition, it has siblings Mindy (Jasmin Savoy Brown) and Chad (Mason Gooding)—the niece and nephew of Jamie Kennedy’s know-it-all Randy—expound on the “rules” governing this go-round.
The problem, however, is that there’s no shrewdly self-conscious hook to this requel, whose single reason for existing is to reenlist Campbell for more de rigueur feminist combat against her ghoulish nemesis.
Considering that this is a gang’s all here endeavor, Courteney Cox shows up out of the blue to save the day and reconnect with Sidney as TV newswoman Gale Weathers, and the film’s finale is a who’s-who of cameos. Rather than endearing, though, the action’s litany of familiar faces reeks of lack of imagination, and so too do two separate centerpieces—one in Sidney’s house, the other in a bar—that indulge in the usual grab bag of slasher devices, not least of which are big jolt-y musical cues.
Narratively speaking, Williamson has no tricks up his sleeve, and from a visual standpoint, Scream 7 is rife with clichés, be it three separate shots in which autumn leaves blow across lawns, or recurring showdowns in an under-construction garage full of translucent tarps.
Campbell similarly fails to do anything interesting with Sidney, whose brooding is superficial and whose dynamic with her daughter—named after Rose McGowan’s 1996 character—is bland and unengaging. Even long-time composer Marco Beltrami’s half-hearted score seems bored by the third-rate shenanigans.
Worst of all, Scream 7 doesn’t concoct the sort of ludicrous denouement that has always been these movies’ signature, instead delivering perhaps the most deflating conclusion in the series’ three-decade history. That alone should indicate that Ghostface has lost his luster and should withdraw to the Horror Hall of Fame where he deserves to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Freddy, Jason, and the rest of the genre’s genuine icons.
Knowing Hollywood, though, the whimper with which Williamson’s film ends will simply serve as motivation, against all logic, to try, try again.
