The cold open of Scream 7 follows a young couple into “The Macher House Experience,” a recreation of the site where this franchise’s seminal murders occurred, festooned with memorabilia of both the real crimes and the Stab film series they inspired. There’s some good tension, shocks and chills here (including a visual shoutout to Halloween, Scream’s original inspiration), and an amusing variation on the original movie’s telephone trivia challenge. There’s also, in its depiction of the commodification of the Woodsboro horrors, a reflection of Scream 7 itself, which contains several praiseworthy elements yet ultimately feels motivated less by creative inspiration than by the desire to keep a profitable machine moving.
On that note, the very large elephant in Scream 7’s room is the dismissal/departure of Melissa Barrera and Jenna Ortega, whose sibling relationship was the backbone of the previous two entries, and director Christopher Landon, whose Freaky gave the slasher genre its biggest jolt of contemporary energy since Wes Craven’s 1996 trendsetter. While it’s up to each potential viewer to decide how that affects their decision to see the movie, it’s undeniably egregious that there isn’t a single reference to Barrera and Ortega’s Carpenter sisters in Scream 7—especially since the other two members of the “Core Four,” Mindy and Chad Meeks-Martin (Jasmin Savoy Brown and Mason Gooding) are back, now assisting the intrepid Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox).
Landon’s replacement, of course, was Kevin Williamson, who got the whole ball rolling with his original Scream script and also wrote this one with the fifth and sixth films’ Guy Busick. Trivia-heads will note that this is the second time, after Halloween: H20, that he’s stepped in to shepherd the seventh film in a slasher series featuring the return of its iconic star, in this case Neve Campbell as Sidney Prescott, absent the last time around. Like H20’s Laurie, Sidney has relocated far from the scene of her past trauma, now living in Pine Grove, Indiana with her husband, local police chief Mark Evans (Joel McHale), and their teen daughter Tatum (Isabel May). (Her other kids referenced in 2022's Scream are conveniently off with the grandparents.)
Campbell is the best thing about Scream 7, drawing on all of the character’s history for her empathetic performance as a woman living with an exceptionally troubled past and trying to prevent that legacy from impacting on Tatum. Needless to say, that past raises its Ghostface-masked head once more, targeting Sidney, Tatum, the latter’s boyfriend Ben (Sam Rechner), and their pals Chloe (Celeste O’Connor), Hannah (Mckenna Grace), and Lucas (Asa Germann, who appears to have been cast partially for his resemblance to Scream-era Skeet Ulrich). As the stakes quickly become potentially fatal, Tatum wants to be proactive rather than protected, resulting in some nicely played tension between her and Sidney. The first Ghostface attack on the duo is well-staged and scary, employing a couple of new interior environments through which the mother and daughter are pursued.
There’s also an unfortunate plausibility lapse here, as some cops we’ve just seen at the house are mysteriously gone as soon as the action heats up. Similar issues arise during a later setpiece in which the younger characters are stalked in a bar, and some of their actions (or lack thereof) don’t ring true. And while a few of the kills are startlingly and frighteningly grisly, Scream 7 also sets a new and dubious franchise record for characters, good and evil, absorbing all manner of severe bodily damage and somehow living to fight or run another day.
Scream 7 also doesn’t have as sure a handle on the meta aspects as the prior movies. There is once again discussion of the requirements of the genre form, this time not as fresh or clever as in Screams past. A familiar, and thought-deceased, face from those predecessors appears on phone and computer screens to taunt Sidney, raising the question of whether it’s really them or a deepfake, but the ramifications of AI (whose use in Scream 7’s promotion has been another fan bone of contention) aren’t addressed in any significant way.
Scream 7 is at its strongest during its lengthy opening act, which climaxes with a great hero moment for Gale, played by Cox with her dependable mix of sympathy and ambition. The longer it goes on, though, the more the strain to offer variations on its now 30-year-old theme shows. This is particularly true of the big identity reveal at the climax, which is easily the most contrived and unsatisfying of any of the Scream films, and denies the audience the pleasure and gratification of puzzling out the mystery along with the characters. “This is all about nostalgia,” Mindy says at one point, and Scream 7 feels like its creators took that statement a little too much to heart, neglecting the specific details that might have set their sequel apart.
