Scream 7 (A PopEntertainment.com Movie Review)

PopEntertainment
2 days ago
4 min read

Updated: 27 minutes ago

SCREAM 7 (2026)

Starring Neve Campbell, Isabel May, Jasmin Savoy Brown, Mason Gooding, Anna Camp, Matthew Lillard, Joel McHale, Courteney Cox, David Arquette, Laurie Metcalf, Scott Foley, Michelle Randolph, Jimmy Tatro, Mckenna Grace, Asa Germann, Celeste O'Connor, Sam Rechner, Mark Consuelos, Tim Simons, Kraig Dane, Cyle Winters and Amy Louise Pemberton.

Screenplay by Kevin Williamson and Guy Busick.

Directed by Kevin Williamson.

Distributed by Paramount Pictures. 114 minutes. Rated R.

A few years ago, against all odds, they brought the moribund Scream franchise back from the dead. 26 years after the first (and by far best movie) in the series, eleven years after the last long-forgotten sequel Scream 4 (which was itself a decade after the previous film) the series was rebooted with surprising success as Scream – which was actually Scream 5 – became a surprise hit in 2022.

The way they got new blood – so to speak – into the franchise was by rebuilding it from bottom up, new creatives, new cast, new settings, with periodic guest appearances by legacy characters. It was old meets new, with the new stars – Jenna Ortega and Melissa Barrera doing the heavy lifting. It did well enough that Scream 6 appeared just a year later, although famously original Scream heroine Neve Campbell refused to be in the sixth film (after appearing in the fifth) because the studio wanted her to do the role at a salary below the stature of her standing in the series and in Hollywood.

Scream 6 did okay, but then the reboot series kind of exploded. Ortega, whose star was on the rise due to the Netflix series Wednesday, decided she wanted to move on. Then Barrera departed the franchise amid controversy. Having lost their two main stars, most of the writers and directors also decided to move on from the series.

So what does Scream do? It goes back to basics. They brought back the original series screenwriter Kevin Williamson – who wrote Scream, Scream 2 and Scream 4 – as both co-screenwriter (with Guy Busick, one of the writers of the reboots) and director.

The studio loosened the purse strings to bring Campbell back in the fold, as well as several other characters from older films in the series, like Courteney Cox (I could have sworn her character was killed in Scream 6, but this film insists she was only injured), Matthew Lillard, David Arquette, Scott Foley and Laurie Metcalf. Of course the last four characters listed there were absolutely killed in previous episodes, a dichotomy that the series sort of explains off by making the characters potentially just be AI deepfakes. For continuity’s sake, they also mixed in two supporting actors from 5 and 6 – Jasmin Savoy Brown and Mason Gooding.

Like most of the world, I missed Scream 7 during its brief release to theaters a few months ago, so I decided to catch up with the new old direction of the series as it is getting its video launch.

Interestingly, they did make one notable change from Scream tradition. This new edition somewhat downplays the traditional meta horror-film-nerd asides so prevalent in the series, making the new film feel more like one of the traditional cliched fright films the previous films always tried to ironically deconstruct.

The inevitable prologue scene – always a tradition in these movies – is the one time they really go in the old-school-meta direction. It follows a couple – the guy a rabid franchise fan and the girlfriend kind of bored and just humoring him – who take a vacation at a secluded Scream-themed bed and breakfast, only to find themselves stalked by a Ghostface killer. Not surprisingly it is one of the most enjoyable segments of this chapter, although it really has nothing to do with any of the action that follows.

The true story takes place in Pine Grove, Indiana, where Sydney (Campbell) has moved and made a fairly comfortable life for herself. She owns a coffee shop, is married to the local police chief (Joel McHale) and has a teen daughter (Isabel May) in school. Of course, Sydney is not meant to have a simple life – either through fate, bad luck, infamy or simple screenwriter whim.

Things go awry when she gets Facetime calls that appear to be from Stu Macher (Matthew Lillard), one of the original Ghostface killers from the first film who has supposedly been dead since 1996. However, the series has always had a flexible view on the finality of death. Is Stu really alive or is he an AI deepfake? Stu claims to be stalking her and her family, and inevitably Ghostface starts showing up all over the place, killing the daughter’s friends and attacking her family. (Because otherwise there would be no story.)

Journalist Gale Weathers (Cox) talks Sydney into finally doing a live TV interview in an attempt to coax the Ghostface killer (killers, actually, like all the other films it is multiple people) out of the shadows. Weathers' instinct to chase the story, predictably, leads to more bodies piling up.

No matter how much the film tries to goose and polish the narrative, we’ve seen it all before. Campbell and Cox are now comfortable and solid in their roles, but to an extent they are leaning into what they have already done. The new cast – McHale, May, Anna Camp, Mckenna Grace – do what they can to make it all seem new, but it’s kind of impossible at this point in the series’ development.

And in the long, long history of weird choices for the identities of the finally unmasked Ghostface killers, this film’s reveal is probably the most unlikely one yet.

It’s probably time to kill the franchise.

Jay S. Jacobs

https://youtu.be/UJrghaPJ0RY?si=3SYRqa1ZVgVSF0Xb