What’s It About

When a new Ghostface killer emerges in the town where Sidney Prescott has built a new life, her darkest fears are realized as her daughter becomes the next target.

MOVIESinMO REVIEW

There is something powerful about watching Sidney finally get what she deserves, not violence, not trauma, but justice. Redemption. A story that says, after everything you have been through, you still matter. That is what Scream 7 delivers for Sidney Prescott, and honestly, it delivers it for all of us who have been watching this franchise wonder what it wanted to be when it grew up. First off, Scream 7 is one of the strongest entries in this franchise’s thirty-year run, and it earns that position not through flashy tricks or trying too hard, but by going back to what made this series worth caring about in the first place. Sidney. Her story. Her pain. Her power. Neve Campbell is back as Sidney Prescott, and from the moment she appears on screen, you feel the weight lift off the entire film. Not being in Scream VI left a gap that no amount of clever writing could fill. This time, Sidney has built something resembling a normal life in Pine Grove, Indiana. She runs a coffee shop. She is married to police chief Mark Evans, played with surprising emotional range by Joel McHale. She is raising a teenage daughter named Tatum, played by the sharp and compelling Isabel May. Two younger children happen to be visiting their grandparents when everything falls apart, and the timing, as they say, is everything. Overall, Scream 7 works where so many late-franchise entries fail because it understands the difference between nostalgia and purpose. For his second directorial film and first for a franchise, writer Kevin Williamson does not just want you to remember what happened in past entries. He wants you to feel why and how they shaped Sidney into the woman standing in front of you now. She has not healed from her past. She has survived it, which is a different thing entirely. That distinction drives the emotional engine of the entire film. The relationship between Sidney and her daughter Tatum is where Scream 7 finds its beating heart. Sidney has responded to decades of trauma by pulling away from the people she loves most. She pushes Tatum away from her, believing that she is helping Tatum make safe decisions when really the only lesson that she teaches Tatum about love is how to love someone while almost never being together. That’s a hard parenting choice to make, and it certainly makes sense, but it hurts like hell. Isabel May’s performance against Campbell is genuine and confident; the character is in a place of frustration and searching for answers, but she is not hopeless there by any means. The chemistry between them feels genuine, which is something franchise films this deep rarely bother to build. Gale Weathers is brought back by Courteney Cox for what could be her most complex performance yet. Williamson finally creates some true history for Gale to build off of, as he provides the opportunity for the three decades she’s lived to finally have an impact on her, and Cox does not push it or rush through it, but allows the character room to grow and develop, resulting in a notable performance that you may not have expected. Returning from previous Scream films are Jasmin Savoy Brown as Mindy Meeks-Martin and Mason Gooding as Chad Meeks-Martin, though they get storyline-wise taken off for depth much more than momentum, their timing and ability to fit into this world consistently show as a strong point of the film. The newer characters, played by McKenna Grace, Asa Germann, Celeste O’Connor, and Sam Rechner, although they do not have as much development in the script, still add an energy and entertainment factor to their parts. This is one of the film’s real limitations. The newer characters function more as pieces on a board than as people you grieve. Williamson and co-writer Guy Busick know this and seem at peace with it. The kills involving these characters are creative and brutal, but emotional investment is minimal, and that gap is noticeable. The kills themselves create an entirely new tone to the film. Whereas in Scream VI, the focus on suffering was done to a point of having far too much of it and leading to a much different tone, Williamson has brought back Ghostface to a place of thoughtful, intentional violence, with the primary weapon once again being a knife, which seems to be what this franchise has been sorely missing. There are many scenes that will have audiences gasping and then exploding with huge laughs in a way that creates real emotion within the audience. One sequence in particular is a standout, the kind of moment that reminds you why this franchise still commands attention after thirty years. After being gone since Scream 4, Marco Beltrami is back, and you can tell he is throughout the score. The music he composed combines new and old/previous themes together in a way only someone who knows what those sounds mean to people who have been listening to the music as long as they have can do. The way that Ramsey Nickell interprets shadows and perspective with the camera makes every scare legitimate; it doesn’t just announce that the scare is coming. The way productions used elements for production purposes is very warmth-based; they created environments that felt right for people living there before creating an environment in which they would feel comfortable being there. The craft behind this film is confident and consistent. Where Scream 7 stumbles is in its reveal. The motive, when it arrives, feels hurried, a function, most likely, of the significant production reshuffling that surrounded this film before it reached theaters. Several red herrings will feel familiar to long-time franchise viewers. The final act does not hit with the force of the film’s opening and middle sections. These are real weaknesses, and depending on how much the mystery matters to you personally, they may weigh more heavily than they did for me. But here is what I keep coming back to: this franchise spent three decades putting Sidney Prescott through unimaginable violence, grief, and loss. It tried to move past her. It discovered, rather loudly, that it could not. Scream 7 is the film that looks Sidney in the eye and says, ” You were always the point.” Lastly, audiences who have spent years watching horror franchises treat secondary characters as throwaway moments, there is something instructive about watching Scream 7 insist that nearly every character’s emotional truth matters just as much as any twist. Legacy is not just about what survives. It is about what we decide is worth carrying forward. Scream 7 carries Sidney Prescott forward, and it does so with genuine care. That is not nothing. That is, in fact, everything.

OUR RATING – A BETTER THAN BASIC 8