Scream 7 — promising return to form, or franchise killer?
WARNING: this review will contain spoilers for Scream 7, and potentially any other Scream film.
Yesterday, Scream 7 came out in the cinema. This would mark the first ever time I watch a Scream film in the cinema, as I was too young to watch any of the others. Scream 6 came out in 2023, when I was sixteen. One of the first things I got excited about when I turned eighteen was that I could finally watch a Scream film in the cinema, as I have been a fan of Scream since I was eleven years old. So, was my first cinema experience with Ghostface worth it?
I’d hesitate to call Scream 7 ‘inventive’. Hell, I warned people who haven’t seen the film of spoilers, but it feels like there’s barely anything to spoil, as all the only deaths are new characters, and you can probably work out the plot from the trailers. Not that anyone is expecting a Scream sequel to have an incredibly inventive plot, but I have to say that this was the most generic Scream film ever. All the other films tried to do something different, whereas this one just played it safe and stuck to the formula.
Don’t get me wrong, that doesn’t instantly make it bad. In fact, it arguably makes it more entertaining in a way; you know exactly what you are getting. I suppose the film will argue that it does do something inventive, as it has moved with the times and incorporated AI into it. I have to say, I’m not too much a fan of all that stuff. Sure, it was a clever way of bringing back Matthew Lillard, Scott Foley, David Arquette and Laurie Metcalf instead of just doing flashbacks, but the idea that this could fool the characters at all into believing that Stu is alive is just ridiculous to me. The film tries to convince the audience into falling for it too, but if you’re like me and call it out immediately, the rest of the film becomes incredibly predictable. I worked out that the man from the psychiatric ward was a ghostface simply because he mentioned he’d seen Stu (or ‘John Doe’).
Oh, speaking of ghostface, this film had by far the worst Ghostfaces for my money. I don’t even remember their names, and yet I found them both so predictable. I found the man predictable because of what I mentioned earlier, and I found the woman predictable because… every other possible suspect died earlier. The film kills off the entire cast in like five minutes, which is cool from an action standpoint, but ruins the mystery aspect since you can just instantly narrow it down. They both also die too easily, he gets shot in the head by Sidney (cool moment for her though) and the woman Ghostface doesn’t put up much of a fight either. Definitely the worst Ghostfaces to me.
Get Alex Pennington’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
It sounds like I am being harsh on the film, but I assure you I enjoyed it and have great things to say about it. For one, the action scenes are amazing at making you feel tense. Obviously, Sidney is probably not gonna die and nor is Tatum, but the film is clever at briefly tricking you into believing that’s possible. I also just love the amount of beating up Ghostface receives in this film, it feels like a natural progression of Sidney’s capabilities growing after fighting so many of them.
Also, can we just talk about Sidney for a moment? This could potentially be her best film in the franchise. I love how overprotective she is with her daughter, how that creates a rift between them and how she tries to bring them back together. I love how cold Sidney can be in the face of danger because she’s so used to it, or just how easily she fights back against the Ghostfaces. This film solidifies Sidney Prescott as maybe the best horror survivalist in horror history (aside from Ash Williams of course) and Neve Campbell is genuinely at her best here for me.
The kills are also incredibly gory. From the first one with that amazing effect of the knife moving the man’s eyes, or especially the ‘beer tap’ kill. This film was incredibly creative with its action.
There was also one moment in the film which made me widen my eyes in shock, and that’s when the first Ghostface gets ran over at full speed by Gale Weathers. Another lackluster Ghostface, but an incredibly cool moment. As for Gale, her return in this film is middling for me. She has some amazing scenes, especially the interview and the final scene with Sidney, but why doesn’t she show up to help fight the Ghostfaces at the end? I don’t know, it’s a shame. Chad and Mindy were welcome as always though, as easily the two best characters created from Scream 5 onwards.
The theme of the film is ‘trust’. Again, very generic for a Scream film, but I think this one does something slightly different with it when giving Sidney a daughter to explore this with. I actually favour Sidney and Gale’s exploration of trust. When Gale asks Sidney in the interview about their relationship, Sidney replies “complicated, but enduring”. To me, that’s the best representation of trust between two characters in the entire franchise. Their relationship is far from sunshine and rainbows, but they do believe in each other.
Conclusion
Overall, this was a decent installment overall. I don’t know how it ranks on my Scream tier list yet, but I can’t imagine it being at rock bottom. Hell, the beauty of this franchise is that even my least favourite Scream film (Scream 5) isn’t something I’d ever call a bad film. I’d still rate that film a 7–7.5/10. I can’t name many other franchises with such a consistently positive rate of quality, nor do I know how Scream manages to achieve this, but I know that they do. Scream 7 has the worst Ghostfaces in the franchise, but some of the best action, comedic writing, characterisation and fun. It’s just lackluster from an inventive writing point of view.
So what now? Will there be a Scream 8? 9? 10? 11….? Who knows. I can’t imagine this is the last time we see Sidney Prescott and Gale Weathers though (despite how bored Neve Campbell or Courtney Cox must be with the characters at this point) so I’m sure we can expect at least one other installment. All I can say is that I will be there when it comes out to watch it, as I will be for anything Scream-related for as long as I live.
