Remember when the Scream movies were about something? Wes Craven’s original horror classic was a playful deconstruction of the genre, though its meta wit didn’t prevent it from operating as a taut and suspenseful exercise. Its follow-ups were less engaging to various degrees, but they all at least purported to have something to say about the enduring conventions of the slasher picture. The up-the-ante imperative of sequels, the deadly stakes of trilogy cappers, the flexible laws of “requels” and franchises, the perils of fan service—these concepts weren’t always flawlessly executed, but they were ostensibly interesting ideas nonetheless.
Scream 7, directed by Kevin Williamson (who wrote the first film), is technically the latest entrant in the franchise. It has actors who reprise familiar roles, characters who are versed in the series’ canon, and a masked killer who taunts people over the phone in the voice of Roger L. Jackson. Yet it has remarkably little to say—about cinema, about horror, about itself. It’s a Scream movie that’s barely even about Scream movies.
Perhaps Williamson sunk all of his intellectual capital into his cold open. In the first scene of Scream 7, a Stab aficionado (Jimmy Tatro) and his dubious girlfriend (Michelle Randolph) visit the site of the original murders—an erstwhile crime scene that’s been turned into a perverse merchandising attraction. It’s a half-clever conceit that touches on the obsessive behavior of fanboys and the mercenary instincts of studios, even as it doubles as a bloody set piece in which the franchise’s famous killer, Ghostface, hides in cloaked sight. But once the title crashes onto the screen, Scream 7 disclaims any interest in intellectual provocation, instead contenting itself with parading old faces and shuffling through standard tropes. Williamson’s screenplay, which he wrote with Guy Busick (who also co-scripted Screams 5 and 6, along with Ready or Not and Final Destination Bloodlines), seems to have conflated being in the Scream universe with commenting on the Scream universe.
In other words: Cool, Neve Campbell is back! The actor who sat out Scream 6—and don’t worry, there is plenty of dialogue about “what happened in New York” and how “we missed you in New York”—has returned as Sidney Prescott Evans, the former final girl who’s matured into one tough momma. The focus of Sidney’s protection—or, depending on your perspective, the target of her persecution—is her daughter, Tatum (Isabel May), who chafes at her mother’s overbearing nature. Tatum, you may have noticed, shares a name with Rose McGowan’s ill-fated bestie from the first Scream, and that’s exactly the kind of faux insight which Scream 7 satisfies itself with. See how this thing in the new Scream movie is vaguely connected to that thing in an old Scream movie? Congratulations, you’ve unlocked this project’s true meaning!
Not that the film is wholly devoid of meta commentary. Beyond the predictable presence of Courteney Cox—who’s appeared in precisely one non-Scream feature in the past 18 years—Williamson also brings back Jasmin Savoy Brown and Mason Gooding as the Meeks-Martin twins, two quippy siblings who like to remark on storytelling formulas. (Noticeably absent are both Melissa Barrera and Jenna Ortega, who don’t show up for reasons too stupid to delve into.) But their dialogue here, in which they hypothesize about potential suspects (“It’s always the boyfriend”), is stale and generic, lacking the zippy specificity of prior installments. (The eyebrow-arching witticisms of Wake Up Dead Man carried a far greater charge.)
Speaking of ruthless stabbers, the most chilling possibility from Sidney’s perspective is that this newest Ghostface is not a friend or a colleague, but an old enemy escaped from the grave. Early in Scream 7, the usual “Hello Sidney” phone call abruptly turns into a video chat, and Sidney finds herself staring into the scarred face of Stu Macher—the co-conspirator who terrorized her in the franchise’s inaugural edition three decades ago. Of course, she killed him way back then… didn’t she? Is this version of Stu just a deepfake, or has he been plotting his revenge for ages after faking his death?
I won’t spoil anything, except to say that the answer is far from satisfying. It’s mildly interesting how Scream 7 pays heed to the ubiquitous menace of AI—how we can never trust what we see on screens, even as our lives become increasingly digitized. But the primary reason for the return of Stu—again played by Matthew Lillard, a normally solid character actor who here stoops to vomiting out a sludge of hacky tics —is just to give long-time viewers someone to recognize. And Williamson hardly stops there, instead briefly resurrecting a number of familiar figures—hey look, it’s David Arquette! whoa, remember Laurie Metcalf!—whose emergence is less dramatic than shamelessly synergistic. (Ironically, Scream 5 took harsh exception to this exact form of clumsy fan service.)
All that’s left, then, are the grisly set pieces themselves, and here Williamson acquits himself competently—at least for awhile. That cold open has some juice, while a scene at Tatum’s school—where a snippy drama-club queen (Mckenna Grace) gets buffeted by an invisible foe while strapped to a harness—is a sturdy entry in the franchise’s annals of inventive sadism. The movie’s best sequence occurs when Sidney and Tatum try to escape from a panic room by squeezing between two walls, only to be waylaid by a silently observant Ghostface and his trusty knife.
But while Scream 7’s violence holds your attention for a time, it eventually succumbs to banal, repetitive bloodletting. The film tries to be disturbing, but its only true darkness is literal; most of the second-half action is underlit, and the hazy imagery nullifies any putative suspense. And while the resolution of any whodunit is invariably less interesting than the preceding mystery, the ultimate reveal here is hilariously underwhelming, with Sidney’s nonplussed “You?” representing the deflated attitude of her audience.
Maybe the most dispiriting thing about Scream 7 is that none of this seems to matter. The movie is a huge hit, and another sequel is sure to follow in short order. Whether that next installment will provide any material of genuine interest or will just continue mindlessly cannibalizing itself remains to be seen, but the series’ inexorable churn is now the most notable meta thing about it. No matter how moribund this franchise may seem, nobody ever shoots it in the head.
Grade: C
Jeremy Beck is the editor-in-chief of MovieManifesto. He watches more movies and television than he probably should.