Scream 7

 

If Ghostface ever rang me up and asked me what my favorite scary movie was my options would be very, very limited (although the answer would be Alien). I’m kind of a coward when it comes to horror, but over the last few months I discovered that the Scream movies are not actually all that scary as I slowly fell in love with them. I’m far from the first person to make this comparison, but many of the films play out less like actual horror and more like violent Scooby-Doo episodes or modern-day whodunits with a cheeky attitude. After catching up on the first six over a period of a few months, Scream 7 is the first one that I have actually caught in the theaters. It is also the first one that I didn’t like.

After (rightfully) sitting the last one out because she was offered less money than she’s worth, Neve Campbell is back for this round and making the appropriate amount of bank as Sidney Prescott, the perpetually stabbed survivor of far more Ghostface attacks than are probably healthy. And thank goodness she is, because she and Courteney Cox as Gale Weathers are definitely the best part of Scream 7, a film that doesn’t feature any other interesting  characters. As a slasher series, Scream has always had to constantly introduce new faces for the sole purpose of rounding out the body count, but previous films at least saw to it that we knew at least a tiny bit about some of these people before they were offed. In Scream 7 I simply did not care for anyone not named Sidney or Gale, and that includes the Meeks-Martin siblings (played by Jasmin Savoy Brown and Mason Gooding), veterans from the previous two films that I like but were given absolutely nothing to do in this one. As for the customary third-act bad guy reveal, all I can say is that it is by far the worst, most asinine, and least impactful one yet, and it’s not even close.

Scream 7 was directed and written by Kevin Williamson, and it’s ironic that I found his directing much more competent than his script, as he also wrote the screenplays for the original Scream, Scream 2, and Scream 4, all of which I enjoyed quite a bit. There are some pretty creative deaths in 7, and a couple of shots of Ghostface will stick in my mind for a while. But not only does the screenplay not allow for any interesting characters, it also doesn’t feature any of the sharp wit or dark sense of humor that its predecessors had in  varying degrees. Not even the meta commentary that Scream is famous for feels right here; Scream 7 doesn’t have anything new or interesting to say at all, not about the horror genre and not about anything else. It really is a testament to the general high quality of the other five sequels (even 3, which I like more than most people) that it has taken this long for the series to burn itself out.

It is high time that Sidney was given the rest that she deserves and this series was put on hold, but that’s not going to happen any time soon as 7 has had the best opening week of any Scream film to date. It’s a shame that such a mediocre entry has that distinction, and I guess the best we can hope for is that the next one won’t suck as much.

Scream 7 is now playing in theaters.