{"id":13757,"date":"2026-07-15T22:06:35","date_gmt":"2026-07-16T05:06:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/moviecuriosities.fmuk.org.uk\/?p=13757"},"modified":"2026-07-15T22:06:38","modified_gmt":"2026-07-16T05:06:38","slug":"scream-7","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/moviecuriosities.fmuk.org.uk\/?p=13757","title":{"rendered":"Scream 7"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

When Scream 7<\/em> came out, I knew straight away that this would have to be a DVD review. I needed some distance on this one to give it a proper post-mortem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At this point, it’s perfectly obvious that the Scream franchise is effectively dead. Sure, Scream 7<\/em> somehow made enough money at the box office to warrant an eighth entry, but it’s a near-certainty that the next film won’t be as good or widely accepted. In fact, given the generational incompetence of the execs and producers involved, it’s entirely possible that the eighth movie might never get made!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A lot of fans might point to the sixth movie as the point where things started going downhill, with Neve Campbell walking out over a pay dispute. I disagree. The franchise was moving in a new direction, with a new slate of interesting lead characters played by highly talented up-and-comers. The old guard were either getting killed off or demoted to supporting roles, and Campbell wanted to keep on getting paid like a leading actor. Nothing wrong with that. The producers wanted to move ahead without Campbell so the money and screen time could go to the new leads, and there’s nothing wrong with that either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No, the problems started when Melissa Barrera got kicked off the franchise for speaking out against the Israeli genocide in Gaza. The producers spent two movies nurturing their new tentpole franchise lead, only to jettison her for the audacity of saying “genocide is bad”. It was the wrong decision then, and the subsequent years of political events have only further proven that Barrera was right all along.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shortly afterward, Jenna Ortega left the project. Supposedly, it was over scheduling conflicts with “Wednesday”, but come the fuck on. Ortega sent the clear message that Scream needed her and Barrera far more than they needed the Scream franchise. She’s a young and talented actor on a meteoric career rise, and there are so many other projects Ortega could work on instead of going back to the franchise that screwed over a valued friend and coworker. Ortega put her money where her mouth is with that snub, gambling on herself in a big way that paid off massively in retrospect. Good for her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anyway, the idiots in charge of this franchise had now lost the two actors that they had built the whole Radio Silence era around. So there’s only one thing left to do: Jettison Radio Silence. And get rid of director Christopher Landon while they were at it. Yes, Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett were obligingly given exec producer credits, and recurring collaborator Guy Busick got a screenplay credit, but Radio Silence themselves<\/a> have come out publicly to say they had nothing to do with whatever this movie turned into.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If going forward isn’t an option, they can only go back. Bring on the original franchise co-creator Kevin Williamson to direct and co-write the picture. Hire Neve Campbell back — if she wants to be paid like a leading actor, we can make her a leading actor now that both the leads are gone. While we’re at it, let’s bring Patrick Dempsey back… except that scheduling fell through<\/a>. So here’s Joel McHale, playing a totally different cop with the same name and apparently he’s been Sidney’s husband all along. What the fuck?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At this point, it was perfectly obvious that we were getting the movie we were all afraid Scream (2022)<\/em> would be: A franchise stuck in nostalgia, navel-gazing and stagnant, rudderless without the ingenious creative mind of Wes Craven. If Scream 5<\/em> had tried a pivot like this back in 2022, it might’ve worked. But now we’re erasing all the good work done by the previous two movies we got.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Honestly, the single most damning thing about all of this is that everyone who left <\/em>is now better off for leaving. Christopher Landon went on to make Drop<\/em>, a stunning Hitchcockian thriller. Melissa Barrera keeps getting gigs in movies and TV shows, most notably when she re-teamed with Radio Silence for the spectacular Abigail<\/em>. Hell, Radio Silence keeps proving with each successive movie how they’re game-changing visionaries in action\/horror cinema, with or without Ghostface. And if Jenna Ortega wasn’t already on the A-list before Scream (2022)<\/em>, she damn well sure is now!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But sitting down to watch this movie, it’s frankly bewildering how the franchise gets burned on both ends. The movie opens with the original Macher house — a pivotal franchise location, heavily featured in the first and sixth entries — getting debased as a Stab<\/em>-themed AirBnB before getting literally burned to the ground. Also, while the “New York muders” are mentioned ad infinitum (we’ll circle back to that in a minute), Sam and Tara are never even given a passing mention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s like the movie leans heavily on both the future and the past of the franchise, but in a way that closes more doors than are opened. How morbidly fascinating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In point of fact, this movie shows open contempt for the prior entry. I haven’t seen anything like it outside of the Star Wars sequel trilogy. It’s like the filmmakers massively overestimated how many people were still boiling with anger because Sidney Prescott wasn’t in Scream VI<\/em>. I can only assume that the filmmakers were intending to apologize for Sidney’s absence in the prior movie, but they wildly missed the mark. After so many characters spend half the movie dunking on Sidney for staying at home instead of going to New York, and after her absence from the sixth movie is the crux of this movie’s Ghostface massacre, there comes a point when the apology becomes outright fucking insulting toward the character and the fanbase! Not to mention the filmmakers who kept the franchise relevant and crafted a legitimately solid Scream movie without the main franchise protagonist!<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The other main point of contention is Stu Macher (Matthew Lillard), who may or may not be the latest Ghostface. The obvious problem being that Macher was clearly dead of multiple stab wounds and a TV dropped on his head back in the first movie. (And this was back in the ’90s, so it was one of those big heavy cathode ray TVs.) This is obviously a play on the numerous fan theories — many of which were encouraged by Lillard himself — insisting that Macher might’ve somehow survived the first movie and the subsequent three decades. It doesn’t make any lick of sense, but the film keeps bending over backwards to entertain the possibility that it somehow might. That dog was never going to hunt and anyone with any sense would know it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perhaps more importantly, what we’ve got here is a case of AI DeepFake technology being used to resurrect dead people and dead characters. It’s a depressingly common and controversial topic in cinema nowadays. And the Scream franchise was ideally placed to offer some kind of meta commentary about that trend in cinema, because that’s exactly what a Scream movie is supposed to fucking do!<\/strong><\/span> But there’s nothing. Literally nothing. No commentary about the ethics of AI, no commentary about why or how dead actors are utilized with CGI necromancy, nothing about the prospect of refusing to let actors or characters or franchises die, not a single solitary goddamn thing. It’s only ever used as a new way for a new Ghostface to dredge up Sidney’s past just like every other goddamn Ghostface in every other motherfucking movie.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Speaking of which, let’s get around to Sidney Prescott herself, now that Neve Campbell is back in the lead. Long story short, she’s now running her own coffee shop, she’s married to the aforementioned police chief named Mark who isn’t<\/span> the Patrick Dempsey character, and she’s got a 17-year-old daughter (Tatum, played by Isabel May), in addition to the two younger children who were briefly seen in the fifth movie.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yeah, the movie went out of its way to remind everyone that Sidney does indeed have two infant kids, and they’re all out of harm’s way with the in-laws out in Denver. Yet there’s no explanation about where this new Mark came from, and I guess they had a teenage daughter who must have been born at pretty much the exact same time as Scream 4<\/em>. Whatever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anyway, I will admit that having a teenage daughter in the mix does add some new dimension to Sidney as a character. It raises the stakes for Sidney to have a daughter who’s constantly in mortal peril. It’s novel and engaging to see Sidney — a character defined by her trauma, who only ever wanted to go back to something resembling a normal life — question whether her own scars and character flaws (not to mention her penchant for attracting psychopathic fans and homicidal maniacs) make her fit to be a mother. Sure, Sidney has long questioned whether a normal life is possible for her, but questioning if she could ever have a well-adjusted family life is a significantly heavier issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here’s the problem: The new Tatum (as opposed to her namesake, who got killed off in the first movie, as the characters never ever let us forget) sucks. She’s boring. She’s dull. She’s played by an actor who doesn’t have the charisma or the pathos to set herself apart from any other dime-a-dozen pretty young blonde. Of course, it doesn’t help that the role could’ve been played by McKenna Grace — a far more talented and successful young actress — but Grace instead got stuck with a minor supporting role and she’s killed off after five minutes. Crap.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alas, the deck was stacked against Tatum from the outset. Here we have a character who’s supposed to be completely useless in a “slasher movie” scenario because she was raised to be sheltered her entire life and her mom didn’t want the “Sidney Prescott” life for her. Which means we’re stuck waiting for Tatum to stop being completely useless, stop making rookie mistakes, and get with the program. It’s hopelessly tedious, and neither the actor nor the character have any kind of star power (or the writing) to make that development interesting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To be clear, I get that Tatum is supposed to be Sidney 2.0. She’s supposed to be a rehash of the teenage Sidney from all the way back in the first entry, back when Sid was just another teenage girl and she had to learn the hard way how to be a Final Girl. Two reasons why that doesn’t work. Firstly, I cannot possibly stress enough that Isabel May doesn’t even hold the burned-out wick of a candle to Neve Campbell in her ’90s heartthrob prime. Secondly, for how much this movie freaking loves<\/span> to harp on about Sidney’s past and how Sidney’s struggles with motherhood reflect her development as a character, the movie never makes the slightest mention of what Sidney was like when she was Tatum’s age. Sure, the characters will go on about Tatum until they’ve run out of words, but we never get that moment of introspection when Sidney remembers what her life was like before Ghostface.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That could’ve been really heartfelt and compelling stuff. That could’ve been a strong bonding moment, when Sidney outright says how she was just like Tatum back when she was that age, and she wanted Tatum to have the happy normal life that Sidney had before Ghostface. It’s all right fucking there and the film had every reason to go there, but it never happens. Unacceptable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For that matter, what about Sidney’s mother? You know, the mother who died long before the franchise even started, yet she somehow had enough dark secrets to motivate three movies’ worth of killers? Hell, one could argue that this whole franchise is really about Maureen Prescott’s baggage, and Sidney’s baggage is just another part of that. Is there even the least bit of concern or emotional weight tied up in the possibility that maybe Sidney has no idea what she’s doing as a mother because her own mom was so fucked up? If there is, we never see it in this picture! Another massive opportunity wasted!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And what about Gail Weathers? Honestly, what about her? The character has just enough impact on the plot and she gets just enough sassy comebacks to justify Courtney Cox coming back one more time. Not unlike Mindy and Chad (respectively still played by Jasmin Savoy Brown and Mason Gooding), though at least they’re around long enough to give Tatum a brief crash course in how this franchise works. And Gail does give them a nice little “level-up” at the end. And both characters are legitimately treated as franchise veterans in this go-round. Sure, it still sucks to see the last two members of the intended Core Four playing second fiddle to Sidney, Gail, and goddamn Tatum, but I’m grateful they got even this much.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sure, the film does have a few solid kills and some clever sequences that were probably better in theory than they were in practice. We’ve seen better. We’ve seen better in this series. We sure as hell saw better when Radio Silence was holding the reins. And it sure as hell doesn’t count for much when the big reveal comes, and our Ghostface turns out to be some whiny worthless background character standing in for everything the filmmakers hate about their own audience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oh, and that whole Stu Macher angle turns out to be a huge waste of time. Which is kind of infuriating, considering how much time and effort the filmmakers put into that foregone conclusion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To be clear, this is not a dumpster fire on the scale of I Know What You Did Last Summer (2025)<\/em>, the other recent revival of a Kevin Williamson ’90s slasher franchise. That movie was a product of pure unfiltered malice against the franchise and anyone who ever loved it. Scream 7<\/em> doesn’t quite go that far. No, this feels more like Star Trek Beyond<\/em>: A rushed and undercooked franchise entry made with zero understanding of what makes the franchise work, more concerned with making a release date than making a quality film.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The whole movie is at war with itself, unsure how much it should be about nostalgia or how to find a new and compelling way forward. It’s like the producers know they failed because a perfectly good sequel era got burned on their watch, so now they’re taking it out on Radio Silence. Most importantly, it’s the meta commentary that has always defined the Scream franchise, and this movie offers exactly squat. All the opportunities were there, but the filmmakers either can’t or won’t say anything new or interesting about the state of cinema today. You’d think they were scared out of saying anything potentially controversial, after what happened with Barrera, but I wouldn’t give Williamson that much credit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The seventh movie only proves what the fourth movie already made blindingly obvious: This is a franchise badly in need of new blood and new ideas. They had that with Radio Silence, and they threw it away for no reason at all. So now they need to find someone else. Right now, it looks like the PTB are placing their bets on the Zuckerman Sisters<\/a>, late of “Poker Face”. I wish them luck. They’re gonna need it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What a waste.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":734,"featured_media":13763,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[5219,5218,3870,4286,5213,5220,5212,5217,202,5221,4288,4938,3185,5215,13,5214,5216,5223,5222],"class_list":["post-13757","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-anna-camp","tag-asa-germann","tag-celeste-oconnor","tag-courtney-cox","tag-david-arquette","tag-isabel-may","tag-jasmin-savoy-brown","tag-jimmy-tatro","tag-joel-mchale","tag-mark-consuelos","tag-mason-gooding","tag-matthew-lillard","tag-mckenna-grace","tag-michelle-randolph","tag-movie-curiosities","tag-neve-campbell","tag-sam-rechner","tag-scream","tag-tim-simons"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/moviecuriosities.fmuk.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/03d39cf5-135f-4cf1-84f9-18f4d743a1d11-scaled-e1784178385185.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3uOb3-3zT","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/moviecuriosities.fmuk.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13757","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/moviecuriosities.fmuk.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/moviecuriosities.fmuk.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moviecuriosities.fmuk.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/734"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moviecuriosities.fmuk.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13757"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/moviecuriosities.fmuk.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13757\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13764,"href":"https:\/\/moviecuriosities.fmuk.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13757\/revisions\/13764"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moviecuriosities.fmuk.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13763"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/moviecuriosities.fmuk.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moviecuriosities.fmuk.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moviecuriosities.fmuk.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}