The journey to the big screen for Scream 7 has been a long and controversial one, but after convincing their original final girl Neve Campbell to return, the latest chapter in the horror franchise is here. Sydney Prescott (Campbell), now Evans, returns to the world of Scream now as a mother of 17-year old Tatum (Isabel May) and wife of Pine Groves police chief Mark (Joel McHale). The family live a largely peaceful life outside of the typical mother-teenage daughter arguments until a new Ghostface killer surfaced targeting both Sydney and Tatum. Now, Sydney is forced to confront her past life and potentially an old ghost come back to haunt her and her family.
The good news is that in terms of dependable, tried and true slasher thrills, this film delivers exactly what you’d expect. The familiar rebooted Scream formula is here featuring a group of young people running from a killer on the loose clad in Ghostface costume with the old school cast right alongside them trying to unmask who exactly is stalking them this time around. Kevin Williamson’s direction, and the script co-written by Williamson and Guy Busick, do a great job of using obfuscation and slight of hand in dropping breadcrumbs that point to a number of potential suspects with any number of motives, creating intrigue for the viewer and thus, investment. Some of the kills in Scream 7 also go past just your standard stabbings and into some gnarly, gory deaths including one inventive kill in a tavern involving a beer tap. Watching the cat and mouse game between Sydney, Tatum, Gail, and the rest of the cast makes for some entertaining theatrical moments as well with my theater cheering, groaning, and laughing together in moments that truly made for the type of communal viewing experience that makes theaters a treasured gathering place and horror films the delight that they are for many.
The issue arises in the fact that while these are positives for the film, they’re positives that the audience has experienced before in horror films in general, and the Scream franchise specifically, with not much new added to elevate the film beyond just another installment in a long running franchise. To Williamson and Busick’s credit, they attempt to impart some modicum of depth through Sydney’s new chapter in life of motherhood and her tormented past as she struggled with trust and her relationship with her daughter. She struggles with letting Tatum into her life as a person and not just her mother, trying to shield her from both danger and her mother’s trauma, perhaps too much so. Campbell and May have pretty good chemistry as mother and daughter and capably portray the rift between older, weary woman and teenage girl, but the relationship never comes across more than an inch deep and mile wide, particularly in comparison to the horror aspect. The relationship between Sydney and Gail is even weaker, just a surface level examination of Sydney struggling to fully trust anyone after so many murderous betrayals.
Without new ground to tread, by contrast, the horror thrills that hit the mark of what you’d expect from the film feel even more rote and repetitive without anything new to balance it out. Another Ghostface trying to kill a few new faces and some old familiar ones with the same story beats we’ve grown accustomed to, even if we do still enjoy them. It doesn’t help that the new killer’s motives feel convoluted and random once they are finally revealed. It feels like a slight step back from the more interesting direction the franchise had been going in, exploring the lineage and its psychological effects of Samantha Carpenter and dynamic of a largely new cast until the controversial firing of Melissa Barrera upended things and caused a last minute pivot. So all in all, that’s not to say that Scream 7 is a disappointment necessarily; no, it’s comforting in the way your mother’s go-to dish on a lazy dinner night is and lacking the same flair. Similarly, Scream 7 is a quality night out at the movies if you just want to spend an hour and half seeing some cool kills and thrills from a franchise you’ve decently enjoyed for 30 years. If you’re looking for anything more than that however, it won’t be hiding underneath this mask.
Image: Paramount Pictures
