Scream 7

Grade: C

There’s a running acknowledgment of A.I. deepfake stuff throughout Scream 7. That is apropos, because the movie itself feels so manufactured and computer-generated. All of the heart and feeling has been sucked out. There’s no tangible sense of camaraderie and hipness among either the returning cast members, or the new young ones. It’s a hollow shell from a factory.

We know there will be a “cold open,” with an actor or two who we won’t see again. Here, it’s Jimmy Tatro (You’re Cordially Invited, Strays, The Machine, Theater Camp) and Michelle Randolph as Scott and Madison. Stu’s old house, from the 1996 movie, has been made into an Airbnb which doubles as a museum of the now-famous Woodsboro massacre. As they are buffs of the story and the Stab franchise, they stay there, but not for very long. The scene ends with the house being burned to the ground – possibly to symbolize the tearing down of old ideas to start anew. 

It’s all just false hopes. What follows is as meta and same-old as you can get. Wes Craven passed in 2015, but Kevin Williamson’s return is the next best thing. He was the writer of the first two Screams, and is in the director’s chair here too, for the first time since 1999’s Teaching Mrs. Tingle. I was optimistic that having him back on board would breathe life into the series without resting on laurels or systematically laying out all the references people hope to hear, but Scream 7 is flatter than it should have been. With all the talk of A.I. here, I could never shake the curiosity of how much digital help the movie itself got.

One reference made me chuckle: the in-joke about Neve Campbell not appearing in Scream VI. She is back as Sidney Prescott-Evans, and has a scene where Courteney Cox, as Gale Weathers, is mentioning some nerve damage she has, due to “what happened in New York. You’re lucky you sat that one out. It was brutal.” As opposed to the better murder sprees?

Sidney is living in the small town of Pine Grove, with her husband (Joel McHale) and daughter Tatum (the wonderful Isabel May). Their garage is under foreshadowing…excuse me…construction. Lots of tools are laying around, and large clear plastic sheets hang there, to make it like a maze. Incidentally, Tatum is the same age her mother was when all this started, 30 years ago. After all that Sidney has endured over five movies, it’s cruel to make her go through it again, but Ghostface, still sounding like Jack Nicholson with a cold, is back – this time to target Tatum. A FaceTime call shows Stu talking to Sidney, but with all the trickery of technology at their disposal, who knows. It’s not impossible. We learn that Stu, after barely surviving his injuries, was recently released from a mental institution. Plus, it’s an opportunity to bring Matthew Lillard back.

It’s nice to see Neve Campbell again. She let herself age naturally and gracefully, and looks good because of it. Fine supporting turns come from the likes of Anna Camp (Bride Hard, A Little Prayer), Ethan Embry (the bass player from That Thing You Do!), and Mason Gooding (Heart Eyes, Y2K, Fall, the previous two Screams). Mark Consuelos is fun as basically a heightened version of himself, who we see every weekday morning co-hosting a talk show with his wife Kelly Ripa. I always love seeing Mckenna Grace, but she is wasted here, in more ways than one. I join the chorus of critics and viewers in saying the opening kill is enjoyable. My other favorite is the one that involves the beer tap. It’s creative.

The “killer unmasking” is self-imposed, rather than Scooby-Doo style after they’re dead or mortally wounded. Revealing who you are that early isn’t the smartest thing in the world to do, but by this point, realism has long since left town. What they have prepared for Sidney in the final act can best be described as a presentation. Every little bit of it must have been meticulously organized. It involves deepfakes of killers and victims past, collectively participating in a monologue. This allows actors from previous chapters in the franchise to return for a cameo, and we see most of the key ones. There’s a very notable person absent, who I wish was there.

All of the fight choreography, especially in the last sequence, will make you very aware that it’s choreography. Ghostface is able to withstand an amazing amount, and everything is methodically calculated. The killer isn’t anybody we’re trained to think it might be. It’s odd how they would devote their life to this mission, being so aware of how it has turned out six other times. There’s a talking point about trauma that is superficially gestured at, but not explored in any meaningful way. The surviving characters are going to need so much therapy. Scream 7 has nothing new to say, but says it anyway.

Grade: C