SCREAM 7 Review: Well, That Was Brutal

Scream 7 is a rather uncomfortable affair.

Which, as we all know, could mean great things for a horror film in certain cases. This is just not one of them.

This is a sense of discomfort that is born out of having to witness someone trying to dance around a whole herd of elephants in a room, and the result is not graceful. What’s even more damning for a new installment in a legacy meta-slasher franchise is that it's not particularly entertaining, scary, or sharp, either.

Following the removal of Melissa Barrera as the new final girl over the actress’ comments in support of Palestine, and the subsequent exit of Jenna Ortega and director Christopher Landon, Scream 7 goes back to the basics, but seemingly takes the task too literally. Kevin Williamson, the screenwriter behind the original Wes Craven-directed Scream, as well as parts 2 and 4, co-wrote the script and directed the film. And Neve Campbell, who bowed out of the previous installment due to an alleged pay dispute, is back, too. It might seem like we should be happy at getting Sidney Prescott back (and some fans most probably will be), but it also feels like she didn’t really need to come out of her “I no longer fuck up masked killers once a year” retirement for this. 

After disappearing from the public eye, Sidney now resides in Pine Grove, a small, quiet-on-the-surface town filling in for Woodsboro. She now has a family, consisting of her cop husband Mark (Joel McHale), conveniently absent twin sons, and teenage daughter, Tatum (Isabel May), named after Sidney’s best friend, who died a horrible, violent death in the first film.

Tatum appears to be slightly disconcerted by this fact, as well as Sidney’s unwillingness to unload the details of her many traumas on her daughter, while too many people remind the poor girl that, unlike her legendary mother, she is kind of a wimp. That’s it, that’s their arc for the movie, since before you know it, Sidney gets The Call, a teenage girl is butchered in a grotesque manner, and Tatum comes to terms with the fact that she should’ve learned how to take off the safety catch a long time ago.

In between the stilted dialogue that Campbell and May have to share when they first come on screen and Tatum’s obligatory ascension to a mental space where she knows she must always shoot a bad guy in the head, there is… well, honestly, not much. There is an assembly of characters that very much feel like they came out of the starter kit for horror makers, so, as Williamson himself put it in the Scream 4 script, "she don’t give a shit who dies, cause there is no character to fill the man." So… uncomfortable.

While the kill scenes (with the notable exception of the cold open) should technically be impressive, their effectiveness is brought down by overzealous excess that renders them almost goofy, and by Ghostface going for some unexpectedly elaborate displays, which feel like they belong in a different franchise. Another set of supposed showstoppers comes in the form of multiple cameos. Sometimes it’s literal ghosts from the past. Sometimes it’s Courteney Cox’s Gale Weathers, who now communicates exclusively through one-liners, as well as Mason Gooding’s Chad and Jasmin Savoy Brown’s Mindy, as the only remnants of the two previous installments.

While the New York chapter of the franchise gets multiple undignified digs on screen, the original and the other installments Williamson has worked on are referenced and revered to a point where it becomes — you guessed it — uncomfortable. Mindy, who, for some reason, everyone tries to get to shut up most of her screen time, finally gets it right: this time, it’s all about nostalgia. So, so much nostalgia. Williamson revisits his old texts, quoting his own lines, as well as some of Craven’s directorial ones, as at least two sequences in Scream 7 repeat similar episodes from 1996’s Scream, almost shot-for-shot.

What feels most inexplicable, though, for a film series that became a cultural phenomenon by actually commenting on said culture, is that Scream 7 refuses to strive for even a tiny bit of self-awareness or any kind of meta-commentary, beyond a few words Mindy gets to squeeze in. There is a point where nostalgia can become toxic, and the contemporary slate of legacy reboots and sequels is filled with examples. Williamson’s film outdoes many of them in that regard, which would actually be fine if only it dared to dig, dissect, or at least take a little stab at the issue.

Instead, Scream 7 likes to pretend that it exists in a vacuum, both on screen and in reality, ignoring the controversies that surround it and the general state of affairs in modern horror, all the while the authors' intentions behind this film remain as puzzling as the motives of its antagonists. Turns out, no one cares what Sidney’s or our favorite scary movies are anymore. The only thing that matters, apparently, is that the director is really fond of the one he wrote 30 years ago.

The film is now playing, only in movie theaters, via Paramount Pictures. Visit the official site for locations and showtimes.