Sidney faces another Ghostface, now targeting her daughter, in Kevin Williamson’s messy and disappointing Scream 7.
Scream 7 brings the return of Sidney Prescott-Evans after the one-film break of Scream VI as Ghostface targets Sidney and her daughter Tatum in their quiet suburban town. Also returning after a break is Kevin Williamson, writer of the original and some sequels, now taking up directing duties. Fitting he started it, and he kills it off too with a disappointingly flat, albeit with some great moments, perhaps final chapter. It’s not a good film, and the why lands directly on the script by Kevin Williamson (and maybe Guy Busick).
To start with the positive, despite his issues at the keyboard, Williamson acquits well behind the camera, his second after the underwhelming Teaching Mrs. Tingle in 1999. He knows how to set up great sequences, with tension. He has an understanding of light and dark, using the depth of a space. Some compositions hold a weight. The kill sequences are especially well done, and there is a visual flavor. The whole opening sequence is great. Some moments shine across the film, even if dulled by what surrounds them. And the cast is uniformly good, making the most of the lacking script. Neve Campbell continues to know Sidney in and out to great success.
But the backing behind the good sequences and performances is lacking. The satire has run out of steam, exhausting everything it has to say about slashers, sequels, survivors’ needs, and the series itself. Guy Bursick and James Vanderbilt explored all that makes Scream, well, Scream in their excellent sequels. Scream V and Scream VI folded the series inward on itself so successfully and cleverly that there’s perhaps nowhere else to go but to retread. Scream 7 is that retread, hitting the same concepts once again with a weary sigh, now so devoid of the satire and comedy the series is built upon. Scream 7 pretty much becomes what the 1996 film lampooned. Albeit one a few steps above, akin to a Scream-inspired rip (such as Urban Legend) than a Scream film. 
There are some glib, half-ass statements of the “rules of Scream”, and a handful of so direct it’s painful moments (a boyfriend coming through the window quoting the first film), reading more “remember this” than a keen reflection. It seems like the creatives of Scream V and VI know the franchise better than Kevin Williamson himself, even if writer Busick is credited, sharing “story by” with Vanderbilt. From what I’ve read, none of his scripts made it to the finished project. Based on the handwaving of 4 through VI (although he wrote the 4th installment), dismissing anything that has come after the first trilogy. He’s stuck in the cultural understanding of these and similar movies of 2000. Heck, it takes a lot of potshots at V and VI (the best two sequels), even having returning survivor Mindy, in a generally useless role, try to talk the movie rule stuff, but shut down by fellow useless Ghostface survivor brother Chad.
It’s no wonder Williamson ignores Scream 4, for Scream 7 hits many of the same beats. Scream 7 continues the conversation on Sidney and her legacy; what she does and how she lives as a survivor of several of these situations, avoiding fame and working around the notoriety (especially in an age of never-ending true-crime documentaries and podcasts). Sidney lives a peaceful existence with her cop husband Mark Evans, a solid Joel McHale replacing Scream 3’s Patrick Dempsey, and their three kids. Neve Campbell is great, giving Sidney a life and heart as she struggles with the notoriety, especially in connecting her life to her 17-year-old daughter Tatum (her younger kids are off with gramma; a good choice not to have tot trauma). Tatum’s played by Isabel May; her performance is varied, but so is the writing for Tatum, so no dig against her. But the concepts are run to the ground with excessive repetition. Ideas of modern tech and true-crime aficionados are the same half-assed lip service of webcam and content creators in the fourth. Of course, I can’t tell you how that modern technology was used, but what might be an interesting wrinkle is ironed out through overuse, descending to a cringeworthy fan service. A few other interesting ideas are presented but abandoned (no spoilers!).
Outside of returning cast, also including Courtney Cox’s Gale Weathers, we also have Tatum’s group: the Mean One, the Perky One, the Weird One, and the Boyfriend. Don’t bother learning their names. I don’t remember, and that’s all they got going for them. Interesting two, McKenna Grace and Celeste O’Connor, are both Ghostbusters, now meeting Ghostface! On the adult side, we have Perky Neighbor in Amber Camp (presented in a way that, for half the film, I wondered if I forgot her from a previous installment) and a hospital orderly played by Ethan Embry. All, old and new, have little going on, with surface-level characters and straight-up vanishing from the narrative for so long it’s silly. Silly actions pervade as well, as the smarter, self-awareness is replaced with incredibly dumb actions to make a scene or create a “mystery”.
To add salt to the wound: the villain reveal is easily the least effective of them all, leading to a limp, silly climax. This comes after easily identifying who is behind the mask. Kim and I looked at one another and whispered our correct predictions too often. No one will predict the why behind the who. It’s awful and messy; it makes no sense in the context of the film, putting a button on a film that is messy and slipshod with the story it wants to tell.
Perhaps Scream VI was the best time to end the series. Ending with a big bang, reflective of Scream and its culture, it wrapped up Scream well, leaving Scream 7 as an undercooked afterthought (with the hanging wonder of what a Carpenter sisters continuation of Scream 7 might have been). Williamson ends Scream with a thump of half-thought-out ideas, watchable and performed well enough with some nice kills, but with a terrible script. That said, being a Scream movie and a slasher fan, I’ll return to it in the same way I come back to the fifth installments of Halloween or Friday the 13th, accepting the lesser compared to what came before.