The opening sequence of Scream 7 follows a young couple (Jimmy Tatro and Michelle Randolph) as they check into the central murder house from the first Scream movie. The house has been turned into an Airbnb experience, decked out with paraphernalia from the Stab franchise (Scream’s in-world stand-in). If it wasn’t already clear by now, each new Scream entry is a simulacrum of a simulacrum, a funhouse that can only ever imitate itself.
With Scream 7, Kevin Williamson, making both his return to the pen and his debut as director for the series, spins that self-awareness into a personal challenge: Is a back-to-basics Scream movie even possible at this point? This surprisingly refreshing take on familiar material is unconcerned with meta discussions about where the film stands in the canon, a la the more recent installments’ discussions of “requels” and “sequels to requels.” Rather, Scream 7 operates as an exercise in what those films are ironically lacking: horror filmmaking fundamentals.
Here, intentional lighting and composition create a tense atmosphere; spatial coherence (and awareness) and dramatic irony sustain tension throughout the film’s clever set pieces, which are capped off by gleefully gruesome kills. This is what an audience signs up for when they strap in for a good slasher flick, but after the lackluster visuals and self-mythologizing that 2022’s Scream and 2023’s Scream VI are guilty of, this competence suddenly feels like a revelation.
If this sounds like an unnecessary jab at the most recent film, that’s only because Williamson himself pays lip service to his distaste with it numerous times, using various characters as sounding boards to poke holes at Scream VI’s questionable narrative decisions. It seems like Williamson’s motivating factor in making this film is partly just to demonstrate that there’s still life in the Scream franchise, and he proves that he still has a few tricks up his sleeve.
Well aware of the fatigue that inevitably surrounds a series this old, the film’s script fixates on generational trauma and the passing of the baton. One plot thread centers around A.I. deepfake technology resurrecting past characters, which functions as a critique of the desire from fans to continuously get more of the same from their beloved franchises. (It’s a thread, too, that functions more broadly as a critique of A.I.) While this is Scream 7’s way of having its cake and eating it too (the film, after all, boasts more than a handful of cameos), Williamson channels this anxiety into Sidney Prescott’s (Neve Campbell) personal journey.
Sidney has been having trouble raising her now-teenage daughter, Tatum (Isabel May), and her anxieties around opening up about her past only exacerbate the feeling that the world is flying by her. As Tatum harbors her own resentments toward her overprotective mother, it takes an A.I.-toting iteration of Ghostface to get them to confront their issues with each other.
Williamson overplays his hand in this regard, with some on-the-nose dialogue dotting the road to the inevitable mother-daughter reconciliation. But however overwritten that journey is, the attendant earnestness comes to feel like this cynical franchise’s biggest subversion yet.
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