The Paw Print

By Charles Zimmer, Chief Digital Officer

Scream 7 is the latest installment in the Scream franchise and is a demonstration of how much this once beloved series has fallen from grace, as well as the horror genre as a whole. This movie was an absolute slog; it is certainly the worst film in the franchise and possibly one of the worst horror films of modern times.

The story revolves around the returning protagonist of the Scream franchise, Sidney Prescott, with Neve Campbell reprising her role, as her and her family deal with yet another Ghostface. Although this time, it is revealed that one of the Ghostfaces from the first film might have returned, Stu Macher to be more specific, with Mathew Lillard reprising his role. One major issue with the plot of this film is that it is very derivative, which mainly comes from the fact that this is the seventh installment of a franchise that has already run its course. The movie is also highly dependent on the success from the first movie, referencing the first installment numerous times just in the opening scene and even taking place in the same house from the ending of the first film. Both the first and seventh installment also have the opening kill scene immediately followed up with a scene where the main character talks with her boyfriend in her room. However, the biggest example of this dependency on the first film is bringing back one of the killers from the first movie, even though he turned out to be ai. One could argue that they are trying to tie a bow on the franchise by tying back to the first film, but it just feels like nostalgia bait to compensate for a lack of new ideas.

The film falls short in terms of characterization and writing as well. The main cast consists of Sidney Prescott, played by Neve Campbell, her husband Mark Evans, played by Joe McHale, and their daughter Tatum Evans, played by Mckenna Grace. The biggest problem is that nothing interesting is done with Sidney’s character: the plot centers around Sidney being haunted by her past by facing another Ghostface, but this was already done in the second, third, fourth, and fifth films. Nothing is done to make it interesting this time around, other than the fact that she has a family this time; furthermore, her husband and daughter are not interesting in the slightest. They only exist to add tension, without the good writing that supports the tension. The supporting characters in the film include Tatum’s friends and characters from previous installments; however, most of them exist only to be killed gratuitously without enough development to make the audience care about them. 

The movie’s horror elements are an improvement on the plot and characterization, but they still pale in comparison to the first few films. The opening scene is actually not that bad, they do a good fake out scare in the form of one of the characters dressing up as ghostface to scare his girlfriend, this is then followed up by the real ghostface attacking them after impersonating a ghostface animatronic. There is also another scene later on where one of Tatum’s friends slowly gets stabbed and cut by ghostface while being hung by wire rigs, the slow pace of the scene really adds to the tension. The biggest issue with the death scenes in this movie is that most of the characters who die have no, well, character. A lot of them do not have much screentime or likeable personalities, so their deaths do not leave as much of an impact and viewers do not have good reasons to care about them. 

However, the worst part of this film is undeniably the scene revealing the identities of the two Ghostfaces. This is usually the most notable part of any Scream movie; while it is notable here, it is for the wrong reason. The first Ghostface is Marco Davis (played by Ethan Embry) who is a worker from a mental hospital only featured in one of the film’s scenes before the reveal. The other Ghostface is Jessica Bowden (played by Anna Camp), who is one of Sidney’s friends and had similarly low  screentime. 

The biggest issue with both Ghostfaces is their lack of presence in the movie before the reveal, being in four short scenes combined. For comparison: Both Ghostfaces from the first film were among the main cast of characters, and they had significant screentime, good performances and distinct personalities. The movies of the two ghostfaces also make little sense; Marco’s motivation was to bring Stu Macher back to life, although not literally, or at least, that is the most logical conclusion one could come up with, seeing as his motives are barely explained. Jessica’s motivation makes even less sense: she started killing people because Sidney wasn’t in her life during the events of the previous film, or, again, that is what the average viewer is able to surmise. All of these poor writing choices definitely contribute to this film’s status as the worst in the franchise, having to be carried by the returning actors.

On the topic of reprised roles, one of the very few good parts of the film is Mathew Lillard’s return as Stu Macher, one of the original Ghostfaces from the first film — or so the audience is led to believe, because it turns out that every appearance of Stu Macher was just AI created by Marco. Mathew Lillard reprising his role on its own is a positive for the film, because his performance is just as good as the first film, but the context of the AI plotline makes this aspect much worse. The idea of AI being used to resurrect previous Ghostfaces is not expanded upon in any meaningful way and feels like they were forcing a modern talking point into the movie. They even use it for more cameos of characters from earlier installments, like two previous  ghostface killers such as Roman Bridger and Nancy Loomis, as well as other main characters such as Dewey RIley, which feels like nothing but cheap fanservice.

Overall, “Scream 7” is a mess, and easily the worst film in the entire “Scream” franchise. This drop in quality is a culmination of uninteresting characters, a forced AI plot line, cheap cameos, bad writing, and horror scenes that don’t get anywhere close to the quality of the first few films. This franchise has been run into the ground so much that Ghostface himself should kill it just to put it out of its misery.