The slasher genre was well-established when the Scream franchise arrived, but no film to that point had dissected itself as much as its victims. Since the original film opened with its biggest star, Drew Barrymore, getting quizzed on horror movies over a mysterious phone call before meeting a grisly end at the hands of a masked killer, Scream has managed to be the best of both worlds: a self-aware slasher that nevertheless indulges in genre clichés. Consider: Neve Campbell’s Sidney Prescott mocking the trope of a girl running upstairs instead of going out the front door, only to do the same after Ghostface lunges out of her closet.
To that end, in the world of Scream, there’s nobody more influential than the film bro, capable of either explaining the rules to survive a slasher (Randy Meeks) or initiating a killing spree in the hope of inspiring better sequels (Richie Kirsch and Amber Freeman). Every installment offers cheeky meta-commentary: on the challenges of completing a trilogy, the cyclical nature of reboots, and the culture of toxic fandoms. As enjoyable as a franchise with some truly disturbing deaths can be, Scream’s animating principle is having fun. (Parker Posey spending the entirety of Scream 3 as an actor-within-a-movie doing a Courteney Cox impression was inspired work.) That enthusiasm bleeds, pun unintended, into the theatergoing experience, which can be as raucous as Scream 2’s cold open—minus the body count.
Wherever you stand on the sequels—I’m ambivalent about a couple of them—Scream has never lost its capacity to entertain and evolve with the times, keeping pace with the genre by finding new tropes to subvert. But as Scream 7 makes its way into theaters on the success of its reboot, the franchise is busy undermining itself. The first misstep concerned the series’ new lead, Melissa Barrera, whose character is revealed to be the daughter of original killer Billy Loomis in 2022’s Scream. After Barrera repeatedly posted about Gaza’s humanitarian crisis on social media, Spyglass Entertainment fired her from Scream 7. This, in turn, led her costar Jenna Ortega—who played her sister and is hailed as Gen Z’s defining Scream Queen—to exit the film. To make matters worse, director Christopher Landon also left the project upon receiving death threats over Barrera’s firing, even though he reportedly did not have a say in the matter.
Setting aside the storytelling implications of losing two lead characters, punishing Barrera for speaking out against what no less an authority than the United Nations has deemed to be a genocide is a reputational wound the franchise didn’t need. Even the announcement of the return of Sidney Prescott for the seventh installment didn’t feel like a triumph as much as it did a desperate attempt to save face—the only reason she wasn’t in Scream VI is that Campbell wouldn’t have been paid what she said she’s worth. For once, a new Scream movie isn’t ahead of the horror curve—it’s mired in a crisis of its own making, with even the trailers drawing calls for a boycott. The question, then, is whether Scream 7 can revive the franchise before audiences pull the plug.
Scream 7 gets off to a promising start. The prologue follows a couple staying at the home of Stu Macher—the other killer from the first Scream, played by Matthew Lillard—in Woodsboro. The place has been converted to an Airbnb filled with memorabilia from the in-universe Stab movies and the events that inspired them. It’s an irresistible getaway for superfans, featuring crime scene–style outlines where characters have died, rubber kitchen knives, and an intrepid host who calls the house in a Ghostface voice to quiz guests about scary movies. Naturally, a real Ghostface emerges, and things take a bloody turn, culminating in Stu’s house being burned down. With the potent image of Stab memorabilia going up in flames, Ghostface may as well have said: “Let the past die; burn it, if you have to.”
From there, one would hope that Scream 7 is a clever referendum on the pitfalls of nostalgia; instead, the rest of the film turns into a soulless, cynical example of them. Living in the fictional town of Pine Grove, Indiana, Sidney has left the horrors of her past behind, raising three daughters with her husband, Mark, a local cop. (Two of the daughters are conveniently off-screen, visiting Mark’s mom.) That leaves us with Sidney’s eldest daughter, Tatum, named after her best friend from the original film. Once again, Ghostface is back to terrorize Sidney and her loved ones, only this time, the killer reveals themselves to be someone from her past who was long believed to be dead. Scream 7 has hardly tried to keep this twist under wraps, seeing as Lillard is actively doing press about coming back to the franchise.
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As a result, the central tension of the film is whether Stu Macher has somehow returned or a new killer is using generative AI over FaceTime to dredge up the past. And, well, considering these movies are predicated on the whodunit formula, Scream 7 wastes a criminal amount of screen time on a retcon no discerning viewer would ever buy. Again, there’s a kernel of an interesting idea here: that fans are so desperate for sequels that they would resort to deepfakes for a quick dopamine hit of nostalgia. (You can find plenty of nightmarish examples on social media.) But Scream 7 actively panders to those types of fans—not just in coming up with a convenient reason to bring back Lillard but by structuring the mystery around giving them exactly what they want.
That sentiment extends to the film’s treatment of Sidney, who we learn is essentially being punished by the new Ghostface(s) for sitting out the events of Scream VI. Campbell is to Scream what Jamie Lee Curtis is to Halloween, but even the latter took a 16-year break between films (and will hopefully remain on the sidelines after Halloween Ends). And when Sidney having a teenage daughter threatens continuity, the film exposes how creatively boxed in the franchise has become—introducing a canon-breaking character simply to manufacture more reasons to torment its star.
Beyond those shortcomings, there are more practical concerns that make Scream 7 an inferior product. There’s little intrigue surrounding the identity of the killer(s), as the suspect list—mainly Tatum’s high school friends—is quickly winnowed down. Cops are conspicuously—almost comically—absent despite Pine Grove being on high alert, including the enforcement of a town-wide curfew. A shockingly large chunk of the third act finds Sidney mindlessly sprinting through empty streets, instructing her daughter how to fend off Ghostface over the phone. While the sicko in me can’t entirely dismiss a movie in which someone’s head is put through a beer tap—one of a handful of sadistically creative kills on display—Scream 7 is too lazy and contrived for a franchise that once prided itself on being smarter than the genre it was parodying.
Within the in-universe Stab movies, a common complaint from fans is that the sequels devolve into mindless cash grabs. The previous Scream movies haven’t all worked like gangbusters, but there’s a baseline level of quality that can still be appreciated in a franchise that’s deftly walked a tightrope between sequel obligation and creative ambition. With Scream 7, however, the series is indistinguishable from the kind of slasher slop that gave the original film its satirical edge. If Spyglass and Paramount have their way—and the box office returns are as promising as they look—Scream will live on with an eighth installment, proving that even the most self-aware horror franchise can’t stop itself from becoming a punch line. But perhaps the powers that be should heed the words of its Final Girl, who, in Scream 7’s most meta moment, says what we’re all thinking: “This doesn’t need to continue.”
