'Scream 7' Brings Back Sidney Prescott, but the Franchise Still Can't Find Its Identity
Scream 7 is the third franchise reboot in the last four years, and it’s the third iteration which can't quite live up to the franchise's glory days. Credit where it’s due, though: Kevin Williamson’s sixth sequel comes the closest of these recent Screams to giving audiences what they want; but the franchise is still confused about its place in the landscape of modern horror cinema.
Scream 7 Arrives After Much Behind-the-Scenes Drama
This sequel arrives with visible wounds, most notably in the absence of stars Melissa Barrera and Jenna Ortega, who headlined parts five and six but are missing without narrative explanation. (Barrera was fired after posting tweets deemed by some as antisemitic, and Ortega left soon after, when director Christopher Landon abandoned ship due to receiving death threats over Barrera’s dismissal. Original franchise star Neve Campbell, who sat out part six following a pay dispute, is back in action (with a whopping $7 million payday, no less), as are Courteney Cox and an assortment of familiar series faces who quite literally return from the dead. Series MVP Jasmine Savoy Brown also returns here, albeit in a reduced role, as Mindy Meeks-Martin, as does a game Mason Gooding as her brother, Chad.
And now, after all of that upset, original scribe Williamson directs his first installment of the series he created and takes it back to its roots. This is both a blessing and a curse. Now a mother of three, including stroppy teenage Tatum (Isabel May), Sidney is living in peaceful isolation (as she is at the beginning of every Scream sequel) with her husband Mark (Joel McHale), who gave up the LAPD for a cushy sheriff’s position. The plot is exactly the same: Ghostface returns, guts a few teenagers, and Sidney has to figure out which of the suspects is behind the mask. As always, Cox’s cutthroat reporter, Gale Weathers, joins the witchhunt. This time, she’s assisted by the Meeks siblings, both of whom are now hoping to break into journalism.
Series Abandons Any Satirical Ambitions
There’s an interesting meta flourish in the form of video calls Sidney receives from Stu Macher (Matthew Lillard, reprising his role), one of the two killers in the original Scream. These scenes are the film’s best, and the only moments that provoke any true suspense or unease. Lillard is particularly good here, finding a nice balance between his gurning, spittle-drenched performance in Scream and a more mature, though just as deranged, version of the character. This device also results in the return of several other since-departed franchise mainstays, though with the exception of one unexpected reprise, it’s mostly diminishing returns.
Oddly, that’s the only meta flourish in this new Scream. The series has now completely abandoned the satiric, tongue-in-cheek assessment of horror movies that made it notable in the first place. Part five made interesting motions towards dissecting the so-called “elevated horror” movement, but eventually abandoned that conceit in favor of remaking the original’s climax. The only metatextual beat (likely unintentional) in Scream 6 was that, just like Scream 2, it was also a messy script rushed into production and kicked into cinemas just a year after its successful predecessor.
With Scream 7, the satiric commentary has been jettisoned in favor of a much more obvious approach which sees the movie become one of the flicks it used to pan, giving it the feel of a cheap, straight-to-video sequel. More than any film in the Scream franchise, part seven recalls Friday the 13th Part 5: The New Beginning even down to the terrifically obvious identity of the killer(s). (Not to brag, but Men’s Journal correctly guessed the killer’s identity months ago, when the actor’s casting announcement was made.)
Paramount
It's a Mediocre Movie, but a Much-Needed Recalibration for the Series
There’s an innate and inescapable cheapness to all of this, but the hit rate is a lot higher than it should be. A lot of this is due to Williamson correctly pivoting the narrative to (finally!) focus on the legacy characters franchise fans care about. The two previous Scream movies often treated these roles with savage indifference, sidelining them in favor of the mostly bland new cast. But Williamson wisely refocuses here in a bid to bring the series back to its roots. Campbell is great here, given a much more rounded arc than the franchise has previously afforded her. You can tell the actor enjoys getting to play the quieter domestic beats that comprise the film’s first half. Cox is also terrific, as always, though her character’s storyline has started to feel like Scream fan fiction. Her entrance in this installment is totally off the wall and provoked rabid applause at an early screening. One does wish that Savoy Brown had more to do; when she pops up, she brings an amiable and propulsive energy that would’ve benefited the rest of the movie.
Williamson is a fine if variable director of visuals (this is only his second feature, after 1999’s Teaching Mrs. Tingle), essaying a few bland suspense beats alongside some very good ones, including a sub-Argento theater slashing and a positively ace sequence in which Sidney and Tatum elude Ghostface by hiding in the walls of their home. Truthfully, Scream 7 is the very definition of mediocre; it’s a 50 percent, two-and-a-half-star movie. But it’s not ineffective. By the time we arrive at the movie’s final shot, a semi-reprise of that from Wes Craven’s original, it feels like the Scream franchise is finally back on its feet for the first time in 15 years.