2026 | rated R | starring Neve Campbell, Courtney Cox, Isabel May, Celeste O’Connor, McKenna Grace, Joel McHale, Anna Camp, Asa Germann, Mason Gooding, Jasmin Savoy-Brown and Matthew Lillard | directed by Kevin Williamson | 1 hr 54 mins | 2 out of 5 stars |
Previously, in my Scream 6 review: “Between Scream 5 and 6, a fan film called “Scream: Legacy” hit Youtube. It’s a reasonably well-made 1-hour project, decently acted, with a good sound-alike Ghostface killer. And in all of it’s 65-minute running time it doesn’t have a single movie reference in it. It’s just a slasher movie. The overwhelmingly positive reception this project got shocked me. What’s a Scream movie without the meta-horror element?”
It’s watching movies like Scream 7 where I’m glad I have an outlet to air my frustrations with them. This thing is a baffling, poorly conceived, poorly executed mashup of several different ideas, in which it makes the stupidest possible choice at every turn, put forth by people who should have all known better. I love this series and this movie is kind of a heart-breaker.
Sydney Prescott, now Evans (Neve Campbell), lives a quiet life in the small non-Woodsboro town of Pine Grove, California with her cop husband Mark (Joel McHale), high school age daughter Tatum (Isabel May) and two young kids from Scream V who are whisked out of the movie with a single line of dialogue. Ghostface returns, targeting Tatum, her friends and Sydney in the form of video calls from ex-nemesis Stu Macher (Matthew Lillard). But is it really Stu, fresh out of an asylum after 30 years and out for revenge, or is it someone else using AI tech to hide behind a Stu mask with a fresh new motive for terror?
I didn’t hate this movie as I was watching it. There is a basic level of competency here with a handful of gnarly kills, the return of Chad and Mindy to liven this thing up and a mystery that strings you along just well enough to give the movie latitude until you see what it has up its sleeve. What this thing has up its sleeve is a doozy. It’s not quite as insulting as last year’s I Know What You Did Last Summer reboot, but it’s very close. We can only use behind-the-scenes drama to account for this only so much. With the lead actresses replaced, the director leaving (in retrospect Christopher Landon would have been a solid choice), Spyglass scrambled to strike while the Scream 6 iron was hot, slapping together the old crew for a nostalgia bait cash-grab, pooling that Barrera/Ortega money to bring back Neve Campbell and hire Williamson as the Craven legacy bagman to save this thing. The result is a hodgepodge of ideas, none of which pay off, but more importantly a Scream movie that feels nothing like a Scream movie. Scream 7 is, as “Scream Legacy” foretold, just a slasher movie. It’s just “Stab”.
Scream jumps out of the slasher movie pack by its dark, snarky wit, one that you could argue was more clever than funny, but it’s still fundamentally a horror/comedy hybrid. Not only is there no meta horror movie commentary in Scream 7 at all, there are no rules (with Chad declaring to Mindy “we don’t do rules anymore”) to live and die by, no menacing phone calls with movie trivia and the movie lacks any semblance of that dark wit. It is just a slasher movie with a Scooby Doo ending. What I feared with 6 has come to fruition in 7. At some point over this series’ long run, a new generation of fans have grown up completely removed from the 80s slasher tropes this series was targeting and for them it simply became the Sydney Prescott story. Over time Sydney went from virginal teenager to survivor, perennially victimized by new Ghostfaces intent on making her entire life story one of victimization – for some reason. Yet, Sydney was always an odd character to hang this series on. She doesn’t like horror movies, she wants no part of any of this and the only thing about her that is interesting is her mother’s backstory which occurred before the events of the first movie. She wrote a book about being a survivor and has spent the last 3 movies either on the periphery of the main story or entirely absent. Yet, an entire generation of moviegoers have turned Sydney Prescott into Sarah Connor: Ghostface Killer.
The Sydney problem propels Scream 7. Campbell spends the entire first act rehashing Sydney’s past with her teenage daughter. Did you know she survived a massacre? Did you know it was her boyfriend who did it? Look at her jacket from Scream 2, she hasn’t worn that since college. If Scream V was a retread of the series greatest hits, Scream 7 is a retread of Scream 4. We have a new crop of teens “the same age as she was”, and the fetishistic born-in-trauma creation of a new Sydney. In retrospect (beyond Scream 2), if this series was going to have a different killer and a new motive in every movie, it probably should have had different final girls. Hindsight being 20/20. It would make the movie unpredictable again. Instead, we are given legacy characters like Sydney and Gale who cannot die and any potential surprises sucked out of the movie. And speaking of surprises, the lack of Wes Craven is really felt in this one. Craven masterfully constructed stalk-and-kill sequences that stretched the suspense like a rubber band. Williamson’s take goes straight for the kill, refusing to milk any death for suspense or horror.
The kills, are fine. The best one involves an actor in a fairy costume suspended by wires over a stage as Ghostface manipulates the controls. The worst, is a beer tap impaling straight out of a Terrifier movie. The killers however, are no longer psychopaths that want to gut your insides. They are goofballs trying to make some point. These movies are defined by their third act killer reveal – a killer third act elevates Scream 4, and a lame finale ends the otherwise stellar Scream 6 on a down note. This is simply the most convoluted story and idiotic killer reveal these movies have ever had. And if you can’t nail the ending, the movies should have a clever opening – nope, this movie fails there too with a protracted suspense-free prologue that has nothing to do with the rest of the movie. Set in the Stu Macher house from the first film, the opening scene of this movie has no idea what the fans want, but it does know what the marketing department wants to put in a trailer.
As a series, Scream has beaten sequel fatigue over and over again, taking it’s time to set up new stories, satire, characters and new killer motives, with each new entry. 7 movies in 30 years is nothing when it comes to slasher franchises. That care has resulted in a product that may have had a few missteps, but never resulted in a movie that was a complete washout. Even after the death of Wes Craven, Radio Silence kept air in the balloon with their best Wes Craven impression, some clever new ideas, a fresh cast and an understanding of what we like about these movies. That balloon finally bursts with the sixth sequel and for it to be at the hands of Kevin Williamson, who created it all in the first place is a true head-slapper.
Hey, look at that, the killer is always someone you know.