The Scream franchise has had a bloody ride since the first movie in 1996. It’s been everything from clever to codswallop in its emphasis on self-awareness of horror movie cliches, and even that has taken a nosedive in some installments.
Scream 7 is somewhere in between. Sure, it relies on nostalgia overload, but it does introduce plot elements that keep it afloat, albeit with mixed results.
Take the opening scene, for example: A young couple visits the house of one of the victims from one of the previous movies. It’s pretty much the boyfriend’s horror movie Mecca, but the girlfriend is as disinterested as she possibly can be. While he’s lurking about trying to soak in all the geekdom, we know it’s just a matter of time before things go horribly wrong and Ghostface emerges, ready to slay his first victims.
Then the movie reintroduces Neve Campbell’s Sydney Prescott, now Prescott-Evans. She’s married to her police officer husband (Joel McHale), and she has three kids, but we only see her oldest daughter, Tatum (Isabel May). Sydney and Tatum have a pretty rocky relationship, relating back to Sydney’s experiences in the other movies.
Sydney starts receiving video messages from Ghostface and it’s supposedly the same character whose house is introduced at the beginning of the film. Sydney thinks it’s an elaborate hoax and possibly AI.
Ghostface continues his reign of terror in the small town where Sydney lives and works as a manager at a coffee shop. The killings are pretty much what fans have come to expect from this series, but too much relies on misdirection and jump scares until it inevitably becomes a joke.
Courtney Cox returns as the spunky reporter Gale Weathers to try to get the story on the mayhem, but she’s not alone. She’s got her eager news crew (Jasmin Savoy Brown and Mason Gooding). They have ambitions to be newscasters, while Gale finally gets what she wants out of Sydney over the last three decades: an interview.
Kevin Williamson, who wrote the first, second, and fourth installments of the franchise, steps up to the plate as director, and he’s clearly in his element, but perhaps a little too comfortable with the material.
He knows exactly what fans love and want out of a Scream movie, and he delivers. However, there were moments when the movie’s energy got bogged down in borderline self-parody.
It all leads to a climax that grows increasingly absurd once we glimpse who this version of Ghostface is. Anyone who pays attention about three-quarters of the way through will know the outcome; still, the movie is content with being on autopilot.
Campbell and Cox deliver sufficient work, but the script lacks an ebb and flow that is satisfactory. There are plot holes that don’t get filled in at the right time, and it’s only when it’s convenient for the plot that they do get answered.
Scream 7 may be a cut above some of its previous installments (pun intended), but this one left me feeling indifferent.
Grade: C+
(Rated R for strong bloody violence, gore, and language.)
Reviewer’s Note: I saw this movie at the Historic Strand in Jesup.
