"Scream 7" Review

 It's weird to realize that fans of the original 1996 Scream could be grandparents with grandchildren almost old enough to watch these movies. While the series peaked with its subversive meta original outing with it's shocking twist opening scene and characters who knew the rules of horror movies, the sequels, while not as good - I scored the first four movies 7/10, 5/10, 6/10, and 7/10 (theatrical in 2011) or 6/10 (Blu-ray in 2021) - they were adequate entertainments.

Even the fifth-in-series 2022 "requel" (reboot+sequel) - confusingly titled Scream while it's follow-up was Scream VI (because we're doing Roman numerals now) - were both 6/10s, the strain of trying to connect the new stories to the old ones was beginning to get ridiculous as it straddled the generations. 

Series Final Girl Neve Campbell sat out the requels, but after the main stars of them - Jenna Ortega and Melissa Barrera - left the planned 7th film for reasons like supporting Jewish genocide (Barrera) and deciding not to work with Jewish genocide fans when they had a hit TV series (Ortega) and then the director slated to replace the requels directors also bolted, producers must've backed the money truck up to Campbell's home because she was back for Scream 7. (Oh, were doing Arabic numbers again.)

Adding to the mix was the return of Kevin Williamson, the screenwriter of Scream 1, 2 & 4, not only co-writing but directing for the first time since 1999's critical and box office flop Teaching Mrs. Tingle. Sadly, he delivers the worst installment of the franchise he originated, but perversely it was the highest-grossing installment, raking in $194M, over four times its budget, and ensuring that Scream 8 is inevitable. Yay.

This time around the cold open scene is a young couple visiting the home of Stu Macher (Matthew Lillard) which was the setting for the original film's finale and memorialized in the in-universe Stab film series. It's been turned into an Airbnb with taped outlines and fake blood to recreate the scenes from the movie. The superfan man says there's a rumor Stu survived having a TV dropped on his head. (Foreshadowing!) Of course, another Ghostface is there, killing them (spoiler alert!) and setting the house ablaze. 

We then catch up to Sidney Prescott-Evans (Campbell), who is living in Pine Grove, IN, married to the town police chief, Mark (Joel McHale with a weird voice that makes him almost unrecognizable), and the mother of Rebellious Teenage Daughter Tatum (Isabel May) and two(?) younger children who are conveniently visiting Grandma unseen. Sidney runs a coffee shop and life is wonderful until she receives a Facetime call from Stu Macher, face scarred but still alive. He claims he's outside Tatum's school auditorium and going to kill her, but by the time Sidney and the cops arrive, Ghostface has killed two of Tatum's friends including bestie Hannah (Mckenna Grace).

At home, Mark's officers sweep the house but conveniently overlook the attic providing the perfect hiding place for Ghostface who emerges, takes Tatum hostage, stuff happens, he runs out of the house and is promptly run over by Sidney's frenemy Gale Weathers (Courtney Cox) and her assistants, twin siblings Chad (Mason Gooding) and Mindy Meeks-Martin (Jasmin Savoy Brown), holdovers from the past two movies. Ghostface is unmasked and identified as a patient from a nearby mental asylum. They team up to find out if Stu is actually still alive. People die. People look like they've been killed, but somehow survive. And another murderer(s) with ridiculously strained connections to Sidney are revealed.

The Scream series has always been verging on self-parody almost immediately with the sequels, but have served as adequate movies for slasher fans despite, but Scream 7 is the first one to pretty much bore me from end to end. The tropes of setting up red herrings and having "Wait, who? What?" villain reveals are so formulaic that it's pointless to even bother trying to guess. May as well just stare at the blankness and wait for it to be over.

That Williamson would type up such a lackluster story for the series he created is baffling. It feels like novice attempting a Scream knock-off. When the scariest thing in the movie is Cox's heavily-Botoxed and fillered face (Campbell is aging naturally), you're failing at horroring. That such a lackluster entry became the most successful really speaks ill of the moviegoing public.

Score: 3/10. Skip it.