If there is a shared dark truth across entertainment fandom, it is this: every franchise will eventually embarrass its fans. And in those moments, we are forced to ask ourselves—how hard am I willing to go in defense of this?
“Scream 7” is that kind of franchise entry; half-hearted stab at returning the iconic slasher series to its roots. It flirts with the “Dawson’s Creek” melodrama that defined the first two films, but forgets how those entries sliced through teen angst with brutal tension and surgical precision.
The story places Neve Campbell’s Sidney Prescott back at the center of the carnage.
After a lifetime of terror at the hands of momma’s-boy psychopaths and deranged film nerds, she has carved out something resembling peace with her daughter Tatum (Isabel May), husband Mark (Joel McHale) and a pair of toddlers who, mercifully, have nothing to do with this plot.
Sidney works overtime to keep her trauma quarantined from her family, which leaves Tatum feeling like she understands her mother better through the books and movies about her than through the woman herself. It is a solid generational hook—one the film actually handles well for its first act, when every choice seems engineered to evoke the tone and atmosphere of the original.
The pre-credits kill sequence is especially promising.
We return to Stu Macher’s mansion—now stripped of dignity and repackaged as a true-crime Airbnb cash-in. It is a sharp, self-aware metaphor for the franchise’s current state.
The opening delivers legitimate suspense and momentum, only for the film to quickly flatten itself with hollow grandiosity that suggests it does not care much about the past it is mining; a strange posture for a movie so invested in generational trauma.
Original writer Kevin Williamson steps into the director’s chair after plans shifted following Melissa Barrera’s firing. The circumstances remain messy, but the idea of a Sidney-centered film directed by her creator was exciting.
And to be fair, Neve Campbell is the film’s saving grace. She slips back into Sidney with effortless final-girl ferocity—grounded, wounded, formidable. If only the rest of the production matched her level of conviction.
Legacy surprises allow the film to flirt with deepfakes and AI as part of Ghostface’s arsenal, but it has no real interest in exploring those ideas beyond red-herring window dressing.
Most embarrassingly, the whodunit formula hits its lowest point here. You will know who is under the mask the moment certain characters wander onscreen, their narrative purpose practically stamped on their foreheads.
The action sequences are staged competently, and Williamson still understands rhythm and suspense. But the cinematography feels oddly flat, and the sets resemble scaled-down imitations of the franchise’s former highs. The film clearly had a budget—you just would not know it.
It is better than the average seventh installment in a slasher series, which is faint praise. But as a longtime fan, I walked away feeling less excited about where this story could go next—and more aware that even the sharpest franchises eventually dull their own blade.
