SCREAM 7

There’s a line from Casey Becker (Drew Barrymore) in the opening scene of the original ‘Scream’ movie where she says “The first one was a classic. The sequels always suck!” While she was talking about ‘A nightmare on Elm Street’, her words ring true for this seventh franchise installment as it struggles to live up to the quality of its predecessor. The OG was a masterpiece of slasher horror but #7 leans so heavily into nostalgia that it barely has its own plot. Neve Campbell returns as Sidney Prescott, now with a 17 year old daughter, Tatum ((Isabel May), and a husband, Mark (Joel McHale), in tow, plus two other children who have conveniently been shipped off to Grandma’s for reasons unknown, never to be mentioned again. They are nicely settled in the town of Pine Grove, where Mark is the Police Chief and Sidney owns a coffee shop. Life seems peachy until those creepy Ghostface calls return: “Hello Sidney, are you having fun yet?” No, she isn’t and the body count begins to climb. An AI plot thread featuring suspected deepfakes bring the events into a current timeline and things progress steadily, albeit predictably. There’s the sacrificial lamb couple who clearly won’t survive the first act, plus a group of expendable friends that only exist as collateral damage. A heap of questionable decisions are made along the way, some bits elicit a laugh, and Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox) returns but doesn’t really do much other than drop f-bombs. We finally reach the great killer reveal only to discover, it isn’t that great. You’ll probably pick it early on. It’s also completely unrealistic how Ghostface can bounce back from all manner severe of physical assaults. The kills are more gory and inventive than the original, but they don’t fit the classic slasher theme and feel out of place here. Film franchises need to stop relying on audience loyalty to get these movies across the line. It feels like Scream has quite literally been done to death.�