Scream 7 Review

The Scream franchise was the brainchild of Wes Craven, the master of horror. The original 1996 movie was so well received that he couldn't resist and went on to make three more. Those are the original Scream movies - and classics. The rest that followed merely banked on the brand value and nostalgia. However, the seventh installment, Scream 7, may end all that and could stop the franchise from making any more movies.

Years after surviving multiple Ghostface attacks, Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) has finally built a peaceful life in the quiet town of Pine Grove with her husband Mark (Joel McHale) and their teenage daughter Tatum (Isabel May). Determined to leave the horrors of the past behind, Sidney tries to live as an ordinary mother.

However, her calm life is shattered when a new Ghostface killer begins a brutal murder spree in the town. The masked killer appears to be specifically targeting Sidney's daughter, recreating elements of the infamous Woodsboro killings. Sidney realizes that the attacks are not random but tied to her violent past and the legacy of Ghostface.

To really enjoy the later Scream films, you have to be a niche fan and have watched the earlier ones - there are a lot many character and situation reprisals. That becomes clear as you watch Scream 7. You then realize that this has been the case with almost all the Scream films except the original. The Scream movies lack universality. It's quite unlike the Final Destination series. You can pick any Final Destination film and have no problem enjoying it - each movie is complete in itself. In that sense, Scream 7 somewhat restricts its audience base.

Even setting that aside, the movie comes as a bummer to those who truly enjoyed the earlier Scream films. For example, it feels somewhat off-putting to see Neve Campbell and Courteney Cox in this movie. For those who don't know, Campbell and Cox have long been imprinted in the minds of many born in the '70s as smoking-hot stars and leading actors in steamier roles. Here, Campbell reprises her scream-queen role as Sidney Prescott, and Cox as Gale Weathers. Looking at them makes you realize how quickly time has passed.

While I was thinking about this, not even a minute passed before Ghostface showed up. And he did what he always does - killing by stabbing. What follows is so uncannily similar to the earlier films that it almost gives a sense of deja vu. As the movie progresses, it becomes clear that there is little originality. The emphasis on plugging in nostalgia is so heavy - and executed so poorly - that the latest Scream ends up feeling like a parodic mishmash of all the earlier movies.

What pains you most is that some dialogues are lifted from the earlier movies as is. Some cover tracks - most importantly, "Don't Fear the Reaper" - have also been used directly from the first movie. Many scenes, including the classic "boyfriend crawling through the window", are recreated almost exactly the same way, though with a new actor. Besides, many sequences are staged so mechanically and the knives are used so mindlessly that the movie might have done better justice to itself if it were called Stab, not Scream.

These are only a few examples, but you get the point - the nostalgia bait never really stops. However, that original Craven-esque campy horror is gone, as is the '90s slasher thrill.

Craven's direction and Campbell's acting immortalised the initial Scream movies. But oddly, performance-wise, it seems Campbell is undoing the film here. First, her acting is a far cry from what she delivered earlier, and second, the movie doesn't give her much to do. She seems planted in the story merely for the sake of continuity.

Coming to Cox, you wonder who cast her in the first place and why. She looks quite the opposite of her earlier persona. She has lost much of her charm and, judging by her performance, appears dispassionate about what is happening around her. She reacts to serious killings and panic as if she were keeping track of daily groceries - like routine occurrences.

Isabel May plays Tatum, Prescott's daughter, around whom most of the situations revolve, though Ghostface's main target is Prescott. However, May is not particularly inspiring in her performance.

And finally, let's forget Ghostface - or rather Ghostfaces, because several actors playing the character in the earlier movies appear at some point in this movie, and most of them are terrible. They remind you of the Ghostface from Scary Movie, which parodied the Scream character.

That said, technically the film is competent as far as a slasher movie goes. Though the situations rarely deliver genuine scares, the stabbings are savage and gory, and the violence is graphic enough. The background score is perhaps better than in the previous films, and the editing is quite sleek.

To conclude, Scream 7 hardly justifies its existence. It even does a disservice to the scream queen and may well be the reason audiences begin to forget Campbell. There are a few scattered scares here and there, but it feels as if nobody involved in the film truly cared. It would be better to rewatch the 1996 movie.