When a new Ghostface killer emerges in the town where Sidney Prescott has built a new life, her darkest fears are realized as her daughter becomes the next target.
My relationship with the SCREAM franchise goes back a long way. I was there when the first film hit theaters, and it changed horror in a way that few movies ever do. Wes Craven was already a legend, thanks mostly to the NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET films, but teaming up with writer Kevin Williamson gave him something new to work with. The result was a film that carved out its own permanent spot in genre history. It cost somewhere around $14–15 million to make and pulled in over $173 million at the global box office, eventually growing into a franchise spanning six sequels and an anthology TV series. The fact that it’s been copied and mocked in equal measure for decades says everything about how deeply it embedded itself in popular culture.
That said, sequels are sequels. Quality fluctuates — that’s just the reality of any long-running series — and yet the audience keeps showing up. “Scream 7” is, in my view, one of the weaker chapters, but it clearly didn’t hurt the franchise’s momentum: “Scream 8” is already in the works, off the back of its predecessor’s impressive box office run. Kevin Williamson, who co-wrote and sat in the director’s chair for part seven, has said he won’t be returning for part eight, though Neve Campbell and Courteney Cox are set to come back and face down yet another version of Ghostface.
Campbell’s return to “Scream 7” is the film’s biggest draw. She sat out “Scream 6” over a pay dispute, so seeing her back as Sidney Prescott — the franchise’s quintessential Final Girl — feels like a genuine event. “Scream 6” deserves credit for shaking things up by moving the action to New York City, but this installment pulls Sidney back to something quieter. She’s now living in Pine Grove, Indiana, a small town that looks, on the surface, like the kind of place where nothing bad ever happens. She’s married to the local police chief, Mark Evans (Joel McHale), runs a coffee shop, and raises her kids, including her teenage daughter, Tatum (Isabel May). For once, it seems like Sidney Prescott might actually be okay.
Then the phone rings. Someone on the other end claims to be Ghostface, and Sidney’s first instinct is to brush it off — just another person trying to get under her skin. But when she agrees to a FaceTime call, she’s looking at the face of Stu Macher (Matthew Lillard), one of the original killers from the very first film. The problem, of course, is that Stu died at the end of that film. Sidney refuses to entertain the idea that he could somehow still be alive and tries to get on with her life. Then Tatum’s friends start turning up dead, and it becomes impossible to ignore: Ghostface is back, whether it’s really Stu or someone using him as a mask. Sidney teams up with her old ally Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox) to figure out who’s behind the killings — and why — before Tatum ends up in the crosshairs.
What’s always set SCREAM apart from the rest of the slasher genre is its insistence on a different killer every time. There’s no supernatural force at work here, no immortal boogeyman. Ghostface is always someone in the room, someone the audience has been watching the whole time, and the unmasking is supposed to land like a gut punch. The two most recent films, “Scream” (2022) and “Scream VI,” pulled this off well. The killers were genuinely hard to spot, and the reveals felt earned. “Scream 7” doesn’t quite manage the same trick. When the masks come off, the people underneath are characters who barely registered during the film, and the motivations they rattle off in the obligatory villainous monologue feel thin and unconvincing. When the final credits rolled, the dominant feeling was disappointment, and a nagging worry that the franchise might finally be running out of steam.
Reaching a seventh entry is a tough ask for any horror series. NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, FRIDAY THE 13th, HALLOWEEN, HELLRAISER, they all started showing serious strain by that point. I’m still willing to give SCREAM the benefit of the doubt because even its lesser films have been watchable, and the way Stu Macher is woven back into the story is genuinely clever. It works as a red herring, and there’s something about it that feels oddly timely given where we are with artificial intelligence right now.
“Scream 7” has its moments. It just doesn’t have enough of them. Here’s hoping “Scream 8” finds its way back to the tension and sharp craftsmanship that made this series worth caring about in the first place.
Available on 4K Ultra HD™, Blu-ray™, and DVD June 16th
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