Scream 7 Review
By Jay Brown
Warning: this review has spoilers for Scream 7
Ghostface slashes his way back onto the big screen with a seventh instalment in the franchise. But this time, can ‘Scream 7’ live up to the legacy of the previous films, or is it Dead on Arrival? Unfortunately, the film falls short when compared to others in the series and fails to bring anything original to its storytelling and visual identity.
The film takes place in a new location for the franchise, the town of ‘Pine Grove’, where Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) lives with her family. But her quiet life is disrupted when she gets an unexpected FaceTime from one of the previous killers, Stu Macher (Matthew Lillard). Sidney is once again forced to confront the knife of Ghostface and the years of violence that have followed.
Scream 7 has many issues, but my biggest frustration is the insultingly dull plot twist. After Stu’s many FaceTimes and phone calls, Sidney and Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox) go to the psychiatric hospital, where the nurse claims he knew Stu and shows them his room. Up until this point, we were told that Stu is dead and that the calls are probably deepfake AI. So, when the killer is revealed to be this nurse—who had only one scene—it feels lousy. The movie treats the audience like we can’t remember what happened and expects us to be surprised when Ghostface is revealed as this random man from the second act. The other Ghostface is revealed to be Sidney’s friend, who also had only two scenes. This reveal makes no sense, especially as she killed her own son earlier in one of the most over-the-top kills in the franchise. Her motive is simply that she’s obsessed with Sidney’s book and hates that Sidney didn’t let go of her past as she claimed she would. The motives have never been the strongest in the ‘Scream’ movies, but these are terrible.
In the opening, Stu Machers' house is burned to the ground, killing the two occupants enjoying the attraction inside. This sequence makes little sense, as it could be removed without impacting the plot, except for its visual appeal. Before the reveal of the killers at the end, I disliked that every killer from the first three movies returns as an AI character on a TV screen, played by the same actors; this is such a yawn inducing way to do fan service.
‘Scream 7’ does everything in its nature to convince you the film is grander and more epic than what it is, a slap in the face for longtime fans. ‘Scream 8’ is in the works and if we are not vocal about how we feel with the quality of this film, it will become the standard.