“Hello, Sidney.” How so we missed you.
Longtime Scream writer Kevin Williamson and star Neve Campbell return to deliver the latest entry in the slasher franchise, Scream 7. Armed to the teeth with the knowledge of what makes Scream films tick, Williamson delivers a fresh installment packed with most everything longstanding fans yearn for, while also recalibrating a franchise in danger of losing its identity.
Scream 7 finds battle-scarred final girl Sidney (Neve Campbell) living the normal life she so longed for, with her husband Mark (Joel McHale) and teenage daughter Tatum (Isabel May). The truth, however, is that there is no such thing as a normal life for Sidney. Her relationship with her daughter is severely stunted out of overprotection and the pain of having to relive her past. And that past catches up to the present with lighting speed as a familiar killer has left Woodsboro and arrived at Sidney‘s front door.
As the Woodsboro Slasher descends on Pine Grove to torment her family and those around her, the ghosts of Ghostfaces past arrive with them.. The lines between the real and the unreal blur as Sidney discovers there really is no escaping the monsters she thought were long buried.
“Williamson delivers a fresh installment […] while also recalibrating a franchise in danger of losing its identity.”
Scream 7 flourishes within the relationship dynamics between Sidney and her daughterTatum. Not dissimilar to the direction Halloween (2018) took, Sidney is now the survivor of 5 (let’s call it 4 1/2) encounters with Ghostfaces of varying degrees of surprise identities. Now a parent to a daughter the same age she was when the horrors first began, Sidney really doesn’t know how to raise her to avoid the same fate. As a result, she really doesn’t raise her at all.
Tatum pleads for any real type of connection with her mother, only to be pushed away in a misguided attempt at protection. Relying on the Stab movies and her memoir book to educate her daughter on what life was like growing up as a survivor of multiple serial killers is certainly a parenting choice. But for the first time in a long while, the character dynamics feel real, due in no small part to the performances of Neve Campbell and Isabel May.
Franchises seven films deep often lose the aesthetic the original films were known for. Thankfully for fans, Scream 7 captures (to a degree) the look and feel of the Wes Craven-directed films. Much of the credit for this belongs foremost to Kevin Williamson’s writing (in tandem with Guy Busick) and in this case, directing as well. The strong character development holds the film tightly together, even if not much attention is paid to the new lambs brought along for the slaughter.
Williamson understood the assignment- audiences really don’t care how deeply we know the knife fodder. Their deaths are certainly gruesome and inventive, but our feelings for them are as minimal as crossing one more name off of the suspect list. The spotlight is given entirely to Neve Campbell and her family, though franchise stalwart Courtney Cox steals it on more than one occasion as the impossibly (somehow more!) emboldened Gale Weathers. In addition, the decision to bring back Marco Beltrami’s score, missing since Scream 4, wraps a warm cozy blanket of familiarity around the whole film.
Legacy sequels most always run the danger of pandering, a thin line where familiarity can quickly dissolve into cringeworthy fan service. I suspect no one walked away from Alien: Romulus without a life threatening dose of secondhand embarrassment from the “get away from her, you bitch” line, pandering so vicious it could’ve left even the most arrogant Alien fan in the fetal position. Scream fans should rejoice that Williamson returned to write this, as callbacks to the prior films are engrained deep enough into the plot of Scream 7 that you never feel the filmmakers pointing at the screen, saying “See what we did there?!” The feeling that what you’re watching has purpose emerges early and sticks around until credits roll.
Sticking on the topic of Williamson’s writing, the meta quality of the story, practically the very DNA of Scream, is certainly present in this installment but it returns to a more sublimely nuanced delivery. Without taking unnecessary pot shots at fans of the last two films specifically, Williamson embraces the controversial clouds hovering above horror franchises attempting to move past their final girl heroines.
This time, the “new generation” fad finds itself caught within Scream‘s infamous meta web. Studios’ desire to create a brand-new demographic of fans has a checkered history at best, and that’s being polite. With this in mind, it’s very easy to understand why Neve Campbell signed back to the franchise that left Sidney behind. To her credit, Campbell takes this opportunity and sprints with it.
“Scream 7 is a captivating return to the world Wes Craven left behind at the conclusion of Scream 4“
Which brings us to the real brass tacks of Scream 7. The Scream franchise, like many longstanding horror series, found itself in a bit of an identity crisis after the passing of the legendary Wes Craven, and more directly, after the Radio Silence reboots Scream (2022) and Scream VI. While I’m not here to re-review those films, which are beloved to many, their divergent paths from the original four films raised this existential question for me, “what really makes a Scream film?” Is it just the Ghostface killer? The twist reveals at the end? Certainly, self-referential horror is ingrained in its identity. But what’s at its core? Scream 7 provides a definitive answer to this unofficial 3 film experiment. At its heart, Scream is Neve Campbell’s franchise.
Scream 7 is not a perfect film. The “final reveal” leaves much to be desired – something Scream fans honestly should be accustomed to at this point. The nearly 2 hour runtime is still not enough to fully flesh out the ideas and characters presented. Yet for each of it’s missteps, there are more than enough victories to overcome them. There is so much I wish I could say about Scream 7 that I can’t even begin touch on without spoiling it, both of what worked and what didn’t. But so goes the way of reviewing a “whodunnit”.
Rather than tell you, it’s best you find out for yourself. A suggestion that goes double for fans of the original Wes Craven run of films. What I can say with full conviction is this: Scream 7 is a captivating return to the world Craven left behind at the conclusion of Scream 4 and provides a clear roadmap of where this franchise needs to go in the future – wherever Neve Campbell and Kevin WIlliamson say it should.
Scream 7 is in theatres now! Let us know what you thought of this blood-splattered whodunit over in the Nightmare on Film Street Discord. Social Media is A Cesspool, Come Hang Where The Cool Creeps Are.
Hot at the Shop:
