Scream 7

More Snooze Than Scream

No franchise is safe from Hollywood milking it for all that its worth. The Scream movies had remained a solid franchise that, despite entries of diminishing returns, had always delivered an enjoyable and meta take on its horror genre. Since being “revived” after an 11-year hiatus between Scream 4 (2011) and the fifth entry, confusingly titled Scream (2022), the franchise has been risking an overproduction that would dilute its reputation. Thus we arrive at Scream 7 (2026).

Scream 7 follows the original survivor of the first four Scream movies Sydney Prescott (Neve Campbell), now a mother of three, as she and her eldest daughter Tate (Isabel May) are stalked by yet another Ghostfaced killer, this time purporting to be someone from Sydney’s past thought to be dead.

Scream 7 is directed and co-written by the groundbreaking screenwriter of the original first films, Kevin Williamson, who is largely responsible for a slasher resurgence in the 1990s with both this franchise and his penning of I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997). This is only Williamson’s second directorial outing after the poorly received Teaching Mrs. Tingle (1999). Williamson’s turn in the directing chair shows a rustiness and inexperience, which would normally be masked by his screenwriting abilities, sadly the screenplay for Scream 7 is devoid of any of the zing and creativity of the first Scream films.

Yet Scream 7 also suffers from the interrupted storyline it had been telling in its most recent films. This is largely due to external forces, first related to the star of the past two films, Melissa Barrera, being fired from the franchise after showing support for Palestine on social media. This was followed by the exiting in solidarity of Barrera’s co-star Jenna Ortega, leaving the franchise devoid of a protagonist. This, alongside the exiting of the directors that had revived the franchise, Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett (known as Radio Silence), reportedly due to scheduling conflicts meant the franchise was suddenly adrift. Thus, Paramount returned to Williamson and original star Campbell for a desperate ploy to keep producing these films. This is especially embarrassing, considering that Campbell had refused to appear in Scream VI () after she was offered a paycut. I guess in a moment of desperation, Paramount decided she suddenly was worth that money after all.

The summary of above is to illustrate that the creative forces weren’t necessarily at work to deliver an entry that the Scream franchise was demanding or that felt organic, it was rather an order to meet a certain quota of Scream films every so-and-so years. While a turn to Williamson would have been a smart move to try and find a creative reason to revisit these characters yet again, the result is a much messier end product.

Scream 7 wants to work as yet another remake/sequel of the first film; we once again have legacy characters returning, a familiar villain being faced, and a younger generation of prototypes from the original film, set up to have the torch passed. Yet isn’t this exactly what 2022’s Scream was? It seems that Scream 7 is seeking to retcon the last two Barrera films, and try to set up a new set of protagonists to follow instead. Yet the story’s construction, character motivations, and central mystery of “who is ghostface,” are botched in such sloppy and ludicrous approaches. The film is never sure whether to focus on new characters or legacy ones, leaving both to feel half-baked and in the background as a result. Sydney is forced to undergo the same character arc she had already undergone in Scream 4 (2011), only with Campbell forced to spew more cringe-worthy dialogue instead.

The narrative is stitched together in the most haphazard way, not really sure with how to lead from one event to the next in an organic fashion, instead jutting to and fro, forgetting about momentous character decisions, deaths, and of course any sense of logic. This is even more surprising given that there was plenty of experienced and talented screenwriters on board. Aside from Williamson are Guy Busick and James Vanderbilt who are frequent collaborators with Radio Silence (Vanderbilt also wrote Zodiac (2007)). Yet, while Williamson’s direction leaves his actors largely abandoned to their devices, the weakest link in Scream 7 is its shoddy script, dialogue, and character sketches.

Not even bringing back Campbell and other familiar faces from the franchise (in cheap cameos) is enough to cover up the faults with nostalgia. This is probably due to the retreading of so many of her beats. Campbell does give the performance a professional amount of effort, yet it feels like such recycled territory for her character, it’s hard for the American performer to extract anything more interesting in her interpretation. May as the new face in the franchise is competent as well, if largely relegated to a rather soap opera beat in terms of her teenage character. It was rather shameless, however, how Williamson adopts a blatant male gaze in his camera in regard to May, so that she is never seen in an outfit where she doesn’t have an exposed midriff. Horror and slashers have always objectified women to a ridiculous degree, and while the recent Scream films weren’t necessarily showing female characters in more baggy clothing, the blatant objectification in Scream 7 is laughable.

If there is any saving grace of this new entry, it’s that the kills are still original and moments of tension are effective if spare throughout. Yet, this latest Scream entry is clearly the worst in the franchise, and seems to signal that the immunity that this franchise seemed to have with the laughably bad sequels of akin franchises like Nightmare on Elm Street or Halloween has worn off. After a turbulent extra-creative process, the justification for the existence of this entry and this new creative direction is never proven to viewers. As such, this latest film is more likely to make you snooze than scream in the theater.

3.8/10