Euronews Culture's Film of the Week: 'Scream 7' - A successful stab at nostalgia?

THIS REVIEW IS SPOILER-FREE

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Thirty years since Scream hit cinemas, breathing new life into the slasher genre and rejuvenating the modern horror landscape, comes the seventh instalment in a series which has been showing signs of fright fatigue.

The horror show started early for this one, as the development of Scream 7 has been mired in controversy.

Following the commercial success of 2023’s Scream VI, a maddeningly uneven episode which was marked by the absence of Scream Queen Neve Campbell, the seventh Scream has endured director departures, controversial cast exits and ongoing online backlash – to the extent some fans have vowed to boycott the franchise and protests erupted outside the LA premiere.

It’s the kind of disruption that typically spells disaster, especially when you add script rewrites which involve ditching the sisterhood arc established by confusingly titled Scream (2022) and Scream VI.

However, with the return of both Campbell and Kevin Williamson, the original Scream scribe who not only co-writes here but steps into the director’s seat, there was hope that all was not lost for the highly influential franchise...

Scream 7 re-focuses on Sidney Prescott (Campbell) - now Sidney Evans, having married cop Mark (Joel McHale). She’s the owner of a quaint coffee shop in the small town of Pine Grove and has a fractious relationship with her teenage daughter Tatum (Isabel May), as she refuses to open up about her past.

When our returning Final Girl gets an ominous phone call, she initially dismisses it as another prank. But the killer’s not hiding anymore, as the caller claims to be the resurrected Stu Macher (Matthew Lillard), one half of the original Scream killers.

Could Stu have survived his TV-to-the-face dispatch in 1996 – or is someone getting creative with the contemporary anxiety triggerist that is AI?

Deep breath.

If Scream was a dissection of slashers centered around intergenerational trauma and the desensitization of violence; Scream 2 a skewering of sequels and the effects of cinema on real-life violence; Scream 3 a trilogy send-up focused on the toxicity at the heart of Hollywood; Scre4m a deconstruction of remakes leading to a reflection on empowerment and competitive victimhood within a social media landscape defined by delusion and entitlement; Scream (aka: Scream 5) a meta commentary on legacy sequels and toxic fandom; Scream VI a stab at franchises and how internet conspiracies lead to victim blaming; then Scream 7 is all about nostalgia and the ultimate acceptance of transgenerational wounds.

We’ve come full circle, not only thematically but also narratively, as Sidney’s daughter is the same age as her mother was when the killings began. And considering how motherhood has always been one of the franchise’s overarching touchstones, the feedback loop of inherited tragedy continues its agonizing cycle in this back-to-basics approach.

The snag is that Williamson takes the ‘basic’ part a smidge too literally.

To Scream 7 's credit, it builds steady tension and momentum in its first two acts, which feature some impressively gory kills (the grisliest in the series by far) and plenty of inventive set pieces. Standouts include an Argento-esque suspended on-stage evisceration and a grand guignol death-by-beer tap.

Moreover, by ditching the increasingly tiresome ‘rules’, the endless meta chat and the laboured mythologising that plagued Scream VI – which was called out 12 years prior in Scre4m when one character bemoaned the “post-modern meta shit” when (ironically) watching the franchise-within-a-franchise movie Stab 7 – you’re left with a streamlined slasher that competently addresses one of the franchise’s most persistent fan theories. Stu lives! Or does he? In doing so, Scream 7 reflects on how the past continues to reverberate in the present and demands a reckoning.

For all these promising elements, however, the main issue with Scream 7 is that it doesn't stick its landing.

While forgiving viewers will be able to look past the self-aware humour limiting itself here to ironic jabs at the series' own recent history, with multiple allusions to Sidney not featuring in Scream VI, there’s no excuse for the third act.

Certain characters (Courtney Cox’s Gale and her two acolytes Chad and Mindy – the returning Mason Gooding and Jasmin Savoy Brown) are sidelined, and most egregiously of all, the Ghostface reveal becomes the franchise’s most underwhelming unmasking.

When a major part of the Scream appeal is trying to figure out who Ghostface is / are, the reveal needs to be the giddy culmination of carnage Poirot, not haired-brained Scooby-Doo. And if the mask drop reaction is “Wait, who are you again?”, something’s gone very badly wrong.

Worse, the antagonist’s / antagonists’ purpose is a mess. Motive matters, and if the marketing boasts “Everything has led to this”, the last thing you want is a shrug when the ‘why’ behind the whoslashedit is disclosed. It’s a missed opportunity, especially when you have your original protagonist back in the fold; and while retcons are never a good idea, something more subversive and impactful was necessary for this one’s payoff.

It almost makes you wish the deepfake fake-out wasn’t so fake.

When all is said and stabbed, Scream 7 feels less messy than its chaotic behind-the-scenes production history might have doomed it to be. Against the odds, the positives still broadly outweigh the negatives. Neve Campbell is terrific, and the way she grounds the film’s mother-daughter relationship ensures that the satire of cinema’s obsession with nostalgia bait maintains an emotional underpinning.

Still, her stellar efforts can’t prevent Scream 7 from being a mid-tier instalment – not as bad as Scream 3 or as overstuffed as Scream VI but certainly not up there with the series highs of 1996’s Scream or its ingenious sequel Scream 2. The final act will leave even die-hard Screamers underwhelmed, and should an eighth chapter be greenlit, a much sharper script will be required... Lest the franchise fully fossilize into precisely what the Scream movies used to gleefully dissect. In which case, decent Scream marathons may have to be dated 1996 – 2022.

Scream 7 is in cinemas now.