You can take Sidney out of Woodsboro, but you can’t take Woodsboro out of Sidney. 30 years since her first Ghostface encounter marked the beginning of consistent fights against the hooded figure(s) perpetuated by ones close to and unrelated to her, Sidney “Evans” Prescott (Neve Campbell) has found peace at last in Pine Grove, Indiana alongside police officer husband, Mark (Joel McHale), teenage daughter Tatum (Isabel May), and their two youngsters. After being in the public eye and publishing a motivating survival memoir, she now works in a quaint coffee shop. Save for the mother/daughter friction common with a seventeen-year-old, life is simple. One can imagine why someone like Sidney would desire this.

But like the yin to the yang, Sydney’s existence seemingly cannot go on without Ghostface finding her (well, save for New York) and attempting to do what other Ghostface killers were unable to. As such, her idyllic life is thrown in disarray when she receives a call from an unknown number, shortly followed by a shocking FaceTime reveal that implants just enough doubt in Sydney’s mind as to whether the past played out the way she and the world thought it did. And just like that, Sidney must be the final girl again, all while protecting the ones she loves from grisly fates.

It’s impossible to talk about Scream 7 without referencing Scream 5 and 6, mainly because of who’s absent. Leading Ghostface into the new era were stars Melissa Barrera and Jenna Ortega. In late 2023, the former was fired by Spyglass Media Group for pro-Palestine comments made on social media; the latter, whether in solidarity, scheduling conflicts or a combination of both, departed the franchise shortly after. To get to Scream 7, Spyglass turned back to Neve Campbell, longtime franchise writer Kevin Williamson, and a host of series fan-favorites to save the day. While the money is flowing after a super-successful opening weekend, no amount of nostalgia is enough to cover for the franchise’s first truly subpar entry.

You can always depend on Scream to have strong opening sequences, and despite some of it being spoiled in the trailers, Williamson uses the Macher house effectively to stage a chase sequence, conjuring feelings back to where it all began in 1996. It’s good for the series that Woodsboro has been left behind. NYC (or at least Montreal cosplaying as NYC) was a much needed different locale to have Ghostface interact and hunt across. By contrast, Pine Grove is so…lifeless and small. Part of the fun of Scream movies are the kills, and to that end, Williamson creates a really memorable one on par with the viciousness of Scream 4’s Olivia kill. Others equally amp the brutality but come off as too goofy, better found in a Final Destination-esque flick.

While we received hints of it in Scream 5, Scream 7‘s strongest success revolves around pushing Sidney forward as a character. Seeing the mental scars and overarching trauma every prior attack left on her and how it impacts her ability to show up as a mother gives this film a psychological edge nonexistent in the others. That said, Scream movies are supposed to be engaging whodunits embedded within the carnage, with a dynamic cast of characters where anyone could be the killer, aided with snappy dialogue about the state of horror or even the state of current world trends. The severe lack of these foundational elements is where Williamson and co-writer Guy Busick lose the plot the most.

Bizarrely, Scream 7 plays it mostly straight. While I don’t love the tamping down of the meta moments (the ones that exist serve to remind us that Sidney didn’t go to New York to fight Ghostface…wink wink), I’m most frustrated with the dull characters who aren’t legacy-based or returnees. Save for Scream 3, every installment prior to this benefitted immensely from individuals who were believable as a friend group, and/or who were written well enough to exist on the periphery of the friend group and play crucial roles in the story unfolding (Cotton Weary, Judy Hicks). Even if they weren’t three-dimensional, they brought levity, or simply were people you wanted to see and hear more dialogue from to confirm whether your killer prediction was accurate or totally off-base.

The core group in 7 has little-to-no chemistry with each other, nor are they fleshed out as personalities, and as such, the moments when they start meeting their ends never feels like people you really got to know. It’s the first Scream movie in a while where I’m having difficulty differentiating between characters who aren’t Sidney/Gale/Dewey, and even remembering character names and personalities. Campbell, Courteney Cox, and a very old sidekick can only carry so much. As for who is actually behind the Ghostface mask, I’ll keep it spoiler free while acknowledging the motive is flimsy and the actual perpetrators feel simultaneously predictable and haphazard.

Second only to Jamie Lee Curtis in the all-time scream queen rankings, Campbell felt underappreciated with the salary she was presented in Scream VI, making the executive decision to not be a part of that film. She clearly received a well-deserved payday to return to a franchise of which she has played an immense role in driving success for. If only she returned to a better installment, and not one that could go down as the worst in the long-running series. At least Scream 3 has been reappraised for some of its prescience. It’s difficult to envision a world where Scream 7 gets that same treatment.

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