Scream 7 isn’t a total horror show but offers a shocking anticlimax

Who wants a seventh Scream movie? Me! Or at least I did, after loving 2023’s Scream VI – still, arguably, the best sex-quel of all time – which served up lashings of entertainment and a gleefully off-the-scale body count with an incisive slice of post-post-modern smarts.

So, what do we fans have in store this time around?

The biggest news is that Neve Campbell is back in the franchise as the original ‘final girl’ Sidney Prescott, having reportedly opted out of Scream VI over pay issues. Bet she’s kicking her agent now.

Here, a middle-aged Sidney is attempting to live a quiet life running the Little Latte Café in the quiet town of Pine Grove, Indiana. Aged 17 in the original Scream (1996), Sidney – who prefers to go by the name of Mrs Evans – now has a 17-year-old daughter of her own, a virginal blonde hottie called Tatum (Isabel May).

The two have all the usual parent/teen daughter clashes, with the added complication of the Ghostface killer popping back up on Sidney’s phone. And this time he’s stalking Tatum.

Cue a series of forgettable teens getting butchered whilst we are encouraged to puzzle out who’s lurking behind the Ghostface mask this time round. Though it’s hard to care much, with this bland bunch. 

Is it Sidney’s loyal cop husband (Joel McHale)? The creepy true crime obsessive (Asa Germann)? The hot bland boyfriend (Sam Rechner)? The girl who is solely defined by having ‘cute hair’ (Celeste O’Connor)? It’s unlikely to be the popular girl (McKenna Grace) as nubile blondes in distress are particularly in demand on the kill list this time round. Perhaps Scream’s famous ‘Rules’ can enlighten us…

Ah, the ‘Rules’! Previous Screams famously laid out the instructions for how to survive in a scary movie: never have sex, never drink, or do drugs, and never, ever say ‘I’ll be right back!’ However, these have now become so tangled by seven, meta-laden instalments that even resident slasher-nerd Mindy (Jasmin Savoy Brown) has almost given up on declaring them.

Instead, Mindy tells us that ‘This time it’s all about the nostalgia’. Though it wasn’t meant to be. The making of Scream 7 is almost as bloody as the gore it liberally splatters across the screen. 

In November 2023, lead actress Melissa Barrera, who headed the last two movies, was fired by the studio, which deemed her pro-Palestinian social media posts anti-Semitic. That seemed to prompt the exit of both her co-star Jenna Ortega and director Christopher Landon. This fallout led to fans calling for a franchise boycott and a massive plot overhaul.

Re-enter Campbell alongside original Scream screenwriter Kevin Williamson, who takes the director chair for the first time since his 1999 box office bomb Teaching Mrs Tingle. It’s proved to be a step backwards. 

‘A little more traditional’ is how another returning ‘legacy’ star Matthew Lillard describes Williamson’s approach. Which is putting a kind spin on what’s a disappointingly, and occasionally misogynistic, by-numbers slasher of stock characters and seen-it-all-before situations. A scene where Sidney and TV hound Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox) go to a psychiatric institute is particularly groanworthy.

The interaction between veteran frenemies Sidney and Gale is where the movie springs to life, and there are a couple of ‘eek’ moments. However, the end reveal is a massive anticlimax; the topical A.I. element feels slapped on by someone who’s never actually used it and even by horror movie standards, these characters behave like idiots – check the attic, already!

Scream was always the franchise that made the genre cleverer and funnier and more self-aware. OK, it’s a tough call to reinvent yourself afresh after 30 years, but this is a definite case of Could Try Harder. Not a totally horror show – just a bit of a snore.

Scream 7 is out in UK cinemas now and in US cinemas on Friday. 

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