‘Oh I’m not hiding, Sidney. Not this time…’
While many of the previous entries in the Scream franchise had troubled productions, none of them have been as chaotic as Scream 7. Melissa Barrera was fired for supposed antisemitic remarks, Jenna Ortega quit the production soon after citing a scheduling conflict, directing team Radio Silence were also let go due to scheduling to be replaced briefly by Christopher Landon, but he also quit after hearing about the firing of Barrera. With no cast, no script and no director, Spyglass Media turned to the only bankable option left – nostalgia. And so, a slew of former cast members were announced as well as the return of Kevin Williamson (the writer of the first, second and fourth entry in the franchise) as writer-director. It’s perhaps no surprise then after that tortured production history that Scream 7 is all over the place…
We begin in Pine Grove, Indiana where Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell), now going by Sidney Evans, is living peacefully with her daughter, Tatum (Isabel May) and her husband, Mark (Joel McHale). Inevitably, a masked killer begins stalking local teenagers and the cycle of death and destruction begins all over again.
***SPOILERS BELOW***
Scream (2022) was a resounding success and should go down as one of the greatest horror sequels ever. Scream VI was almost as good, but suffered from an unwillingness to kill off any of the main cast members. By all accounts, Radio Silence were going to correct this in their version of Scream 7 which would have been darker and bloodier. Oh, how I wish we had got that movie instead of this one.
Let me start with the positives. The long awaited return of Matthew Lillard as Stu Macher, whilst preposterous on a plot level (more on the later), is still pretty thrilling. Stu is one of my favourite horror characters of all time, so to see him tearing up the big screen again was immensely satisfying. Isabel May (of 1883 fame) shares a convincing chemistry with Campbell, and while I have my doubts that she is capable of carrying the franchise going forward, she does enough to at least make me intrigued to see what that would look like. A couple of the death sequences are inventive. McHale is a solid addition to this universe. Aaaand that’s pretty much it.
Which brings us to the bad stuff. Where to start? There is an AI plotline here which is so fucking stupid that it’s borderline insulting. This angle allows Williamson to bring back several other characters from Scream entries past, some of whom will be totally alien to more casual viewers, but, more terminally, it also makes no sense whatsoever. The opening scene feels tired and derivative where the slaying of Samara Weaving in Scream VI felt vital and thrilling. The ending reveal… good heavens… it is a bad one. Undoubtedly the worst of the franchise. It appears we are at the Force Awakens stage of the creative process. Having totally run out of ideas, everything in this movie feels like something we have seen before – both in this franchise and in the Halloween reboots.
While it was nice to see Sidney battling out of with Ghostface again (Campbell is genuinely good here), and I’ll always get a kick out of Sid, Gale and Stu interacting, there’s no getting away from the fact that we’ve reached the nadir of the franchise. The only way Scream survives now is a blood bath in part 8. It is simply not sustainable to have Sidney, Mark, Tatum, Gale, Mindy and Chad all still alive heading into the next entry. But, sadly, this is where we are. All successful franchises are terrified of killing off fan favourites. This risk-averse, fan-service bullshit ruined Game of Thrones, it ruined Stranger Things, and if nothing changes in part 8, it’ll ruin Scream too.
