Scream 7 review
The Scream franchise still knows what it wants to be…but it might be done being what you want.
New movie reviews will not contain spoilers.
Scream 7
Directed by Kevin Williamson
Screenplay by Kevin Williamson and Guy Busick
Starring Neve Campbell, Courtney Cox, Isabel May, Jasmin Savoy Brown, Mason Gooding, Joel McHale and Anna Camp
Scream 7 Review
Scream 3 has stood alone as the worst of the franchise since its release 26 years ago. Its biggest issue was that it didn’t understand the series it was a part of. It went for slapstick and cartoon characters in place of the cleverness and darkness that highlights the rest of the franchise. There was something interesting about it taking on the Hollywood casting couch while being executive produced by Harvey Weinstein…but it was mostly a miss. With due respect to Parker Posey’s great performance. Well…Scream 3 remains the worst movie in the Scream franchise…but it now has a bit of company near the bottom. Scream 7 tops out at “pretty good”. Pretty good isn’t good enough in a franchise full of hits.
The seventh Scream suffers from different problems than Scream 3 did. It understands itself and the series perfectly fine. It just isn’t interested in the same things that its fans are anymore. This becomes painfully clear in the first act of the film when we spend a long time catching up with Sidney Prescott and her family life. It doesn’t feel like a Scream movie. It feels like an only somewhat interesting legacy sequel. As if we were watching a family drama made as a sequel to a horror movie. Eventually, it starts to look more like a Scream movie. But it almost never feels like one.
That’s not because series creator and first time Scream director Kevin Williamson has forgotten what the franchise is. He knows better than anyone. And that might be the problem. I said on this week’s podcast episode that the original Scream that Wes Craven couldn’t have written the movie. A fan had to do it. Someone who loved slasher movies and could find a fresh take on the material. Scream is a masterpiece. Parts 2, 4, 5 and 6 are varying degrees of very good/great. Scream 7 is ok. And I think it’s because Kevin Williamson, once the outsider who found his big break with a spec script on the genre he loved, is now too close to the material. He loves Sidney Prescott. He’s genuinely interested in delving into her life as a wife and mother years removed from being the main target of a Ghostface killer.
But is it what we want out of Scream? No answer can speak for everyone. But the commitment to the story of Sidney and her oldest daughter Tatum is at the crux of Scream 7’s biggest problem. It doesn’t fit with the rest of the material. Since Sidney is our main character…Tatum’s story gets the short end of the stick. Her character arc is basically…wanting to know more about her mother who has shielded her from the horrors of her life to this point. She has a group of friends, of course…but they’re two-dimensional characters that hang around the B-plot waiting to be picked off one by one. Or be suspects, I guess. Despite casting some fine actors in the roles…the characters aren’t given enough to be interesting as either.
In fact, Scream 7 is downright boring for a good chunk of time. Eventually, Gale arrives on the scene (with Chad and Mindy) to liven things up and help the movie find its footing…but it takes some patience to get there. Even the opening scene…a hallmark of the franchise…feels listless and perfunctory here. There are some great kills and solid gore effects throughout the movie…but you struggle to care about most of the people being killed. It even (finally) uses an idea for a mid-story killer reveal that I’ve been wanting to see for a long time. A purposefully underwhelming mask lift that sets Sidney and Gale off to track down accomplices. That’s good stuff. Even if it isn’t handled as well as it could have been.
A lot has been made about Scream 7 pulling away from the meta-commentary that has made the franchise stand out over the last three decades. There’s a narrative reason for it. Mindy deduces that whoever is behind these killings doesn’t care about the Stab franchise or horror movies in general. They care about Sidney Prescott. It’s a more personal story…and the commentary is on family not movies that inspired this killer to pick up their hunting knife. Which brings us to the Stu Macher sized elephant in the room.
Scream 7 spends a lot of time asking the question…is Stu Macher really dead? It wouldn’t be the first time the series has used fan speculation to bring back a character. Kirby turned out to be alive and took part in Scream VI. Rumors that Stu survived his run-in with a television at the end of Scream have been part of fan theories for three decades. When we see the already announced Matthew Lillard pop up on Sidney’s screen as a scarred but still crazy Stu…characters quickly dismiss it as an AI trick. That would certainly fit in with the franchise’s use of evolving technology in its storytelling. But the story does a pretty good job keeping the question hanging over things. That investigation Sidney and Gale take on leads to some information that calls into question everything they thought they knew.
Scream 7 picks up the pacing after a slow start to deliver some fun kills and nice set pieces. But it can also feel a lot like fan service tacked on to an underwhelming story. For every good idea…there’s a misstep. For every great moment…there’s a bad one. Perhaps the most troubling thing about it is that I walked out of the theater having listened to the final killer monologue about the how and why of this series of murders…and I can barely tell you what the motive was. It’s easily the worst of the series…whatever they were trying to say. But there are some fun moments in that climax as well. Such is the story of Scream 7. A movie that knows what it wants to be…but it might just be done being what you want.
Scare Value
Scream has been a remarkably consistent franchise. Through its first six installments there has only been one I considered less than great. Now there are two. While Scream 7 fares better than Scream 3…it still pales in comparison to the rest of the franchise. It rarely feels like a Scream movie. It feels like a regular slasher movie with a lot of fan service thrown on top. Some of it works better than others. But paper-thin new characters and the worst motive in the series drag down some nice kills and fine performances. It’s still pretty good. But in this series…that isn’t good enough.
2.5/5
Scream 7 Link
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