Scream 7 (2026)
As the expression goes, age is just a number. However, in the case of Scream 7, age might be an indicator of a franchise finally showing some real signs of wear and tear.
That's not to say Scream 7 is completely devoid of fun. The new installment in this 30-year-old franchise brings back veteran scream queen Neve Campbell as Sidney Prescott, now living in Pine Grove, Indiana, with husband Mark (Joel McHale) and daughter Tatum (Isabel May). As you might have guessed, there's another masked killer, this time targeting Tatum and her high school cohorts for reasons unbeknownst to us.
Figuring out whose face is underneath the Ghostface mask is part of the fun of any Scream movie, though this installment's whodunit feels more perfunctory than ever. The eventual unmasking seemed to provoke a collective shrug in my audience, not exactly the reaction I imagine writer and director Kevin Williamson was hoping for.
For all of the fizzy verve he can often have as a writer, Williamson is no Wes Craven—or Matt Bettinelli-Olpin or Tyler Gillett, for that matter. Bettineli-Olpin and Gillett, a directing duo who work under the moniker Radio Silence, are no Wes Craven either, though they brought some fun and inventive bits of filmmaking to Scream (2022) and 6. Unfortunately, Scream 7 is fairly devoid of memorable set pieces, save for the film's opening murder, which pokes fun at true-crime junkies with some gleefully gory panache.
Strangely, gone is most of the franchise's meta-textual humor. Scream 6 returnees Chad (Mason Gooding) and Mindy (Jasmin Savoy Brown) provide a few moments of comic relief, though their presence in this installment strains credulity (even for a series that routinely resurrects characters who have been stabbed no less than 30 times). Campbell, for her part, brings a soft-spoken seriousness to her portrayal as perennial survivor Sidney. May, while under-utilized as Tatum, has a young Campbell-esque quality that suits her role.
It's scary to say but, while capably-enough
acted and staged, Scream 7 has become the kind of rote slasher that the
original Scream would have made fun of.
