iReview | SCREAM 7
- JC Alvarez
- 1 day ago
- 6 min read
In Theaters Now
Ghostface is back…with a vengeance! The kills are more brutal. The tension is greater. As the original’s “final girl,” Neve Campbell returns to SCREAM 7 with a bloodthirsty killer hot on her trail, looking to carve out a new legacy!
Did you miss her? After sitting out the last installment of the slasher film franchise, the ire of Ghostface’s trail of blood, Sidney Prescott is back! SCREAM 7 brings back several familiar faces, but the one that fans were most looking forward to, Neve Campbell, has reclaimed her spotlight as the series’ most beloved, and truly most unlucky, final girl! When the directing duo Matt Bettinelli-Olphi and Tyler Gillett, collectively known as Radio Silence in the industry, rebooted Scream in 2022, they retooled and rejiggered the main plotline for a new generation of slasher-victims.
Returning the franchise to its familiar hometown of Woodsboro, California, 2011’s Scream 4 did the same, but decisively took an off-ramp to introduce audiences to The Carpenters. Sisters Samantha (Melissa Barrera) and Tara (Jenna Ortega) were not immediately identifiable to movie fans of Kevin Williamson’s late-nineties OG, but connective tissue would quickly establish Samantha’s in the gene pool as the illegitimate daughter of Scream (1996) killer Billy Loomis (Skeet Ulrich). The returning cast of “legacy” characters helped to bridge the gap. Consequently, all bets are off in a “re-quel” [reboot meets sequel], and fans had to bid adieu to franchise favorite, David Arquette’s Dewey Riley.
With the baton having been properly passed to Barrera’s Sam Carpenter and by proxy Ortega’s Tara, by the time 2023’s Scream 6 was unsheathed, not only did the franchise have not one, but two stars at the center, it moved crime scenes from the burbs of Woodsboro, California, to the concrete jungle of New York City. Campbell famously sat out the Big Apple murder scene. Courtney Cox, as intrepid reporter Gale Weathers, remained the constant legacy character, the only one to appear in all the features, returning for Scream 7. In fact, the events of Scream 6 are referenced multiple times, and not just to keep Jasmin Savoy Brown and Mason Gooding, the Meeks-Martin Twins, relevant in the latest film.
By this seventh installment, you have to think, just how unlucky this Sidney Prescott must be that murder and mayhem have been shadowing her for 30 years. And with an opening weekend box office gross of 97.2 million worldwide, a best for the franchise, and an industry best for a horror film, fans clearly are happy to keep in step with our Ghostface Killer’s latest motivation — which is once again not only to ruin Sidney’s day, but to wreck havok on her teenage daughter, Tatum, played by Isabel May of Yellowstone spin-off fame, 1883. As Savoy Brown’s Mindy puts it most eloquently, this time around, it’s all about the “nostalgia” of it all.
That certainly could be attributed to Scream 7's success with audiences. Another absolute contributing factor is likely Williamson’s dual role returning as co-writer/plotter of the franchise he launched, and this time, the scribe was also stepping into the director’s chair. The coveted seat once held by the legendary Wes Craven, who is largely known for his celebrated influence in the horror genre, was also where the filmmaker mentored Williamson in the business of movies. The lead-up to Scream 7 is something of a drama in itself, but having landed back in the scope of Kevin Williamson, bringing Campbell and Cox back into the fray, is no small full-circle moment.
She’s All Grown Up.
Thirty years later, and Scream is still serving up the shock and awe! By comparison to its original, this iteration is much more terrifying and even more menacing. The killer’s tactics and turns of the knife are crueler and relentlessly brutal. Ghostface, with its mask of a permanently fixed, chillingly unreadable expression of sad horror, heavy-handedly set on outdoing any of its maniacal predecessors, and why not, when the murderer taunting Sidney is someone with an axe to grind. Matthew Lillard as Stu Macher terrorized the teen in 1996 and was believed to be dead. Having met an electrifying end when Sidney drops a television set on his head, but nope — it looks like Stu survived.
Mind you, among the fanbase, Stu’s resurrection has been a major topic of debate, inspiring countless conspiracies, including theories that Stu has been the mastermind behind every Ghostface killing spree over the last three decades. A master manipulator working like a puppeteer behind the scenes, pulling every string. It’s an interesting theory, and likely one that inspired Williamson when the reins were handed to him. The controversy surrounding Barrera and Ortega’s exit from the franchise, and the inappropriate deliberation from the fans that led to director Christopher Landon signing off, opened the door for Williamson to retool the script and revisit his vision of where to go next for Scream 7.
Scream 7 opens with the classic murder prologue. The first kills are two fans who Airbnb an evening at the former home of Stu Macher, the murder house, a site of curiosity for fans of the in-movie “Stab” movies based on the attacks on Sidney Prescott and the denizens of Woodsboro. As is the usual take, Ghostface is hiding amid the collected relics and makes short order of our two unsuspecting simpletons. To seal the deal, Ghostface burns down the house! Sending the loudly profound message: Ghostface is back!
When Campbell signed on to return to the franchise for Scream 7, she was heavily invested in creative discussions, especially about who should direct the feature. “I always thought it would be a wonderful thing,” the actress insisted, “to have Kevin direct. He knows the characters better than anybody.” Williamson agreed, charting the path forward for the franchise to take a renewed examination of its legacy. “My goal with this movie,” Williamson has said, “was to create some very visceral moments and really scare the audience. That’s what Wes Craven would do, and we wanted to honor that.” Recalling film references like the hit Halloween that inspired him, Williamson used every trick her learned from Craven.
Williamson says, “Your goal with the Scream films is to keep doing something fresh and new, but you also want to bring back the nostalgia feeling that the first film gave us.” To do that, Williamson and his co-writer Guy Busick were determined to remain authentic to the film’s universe, which meant paying close attention to the characters, both old and new, that would become the targets of Ghostface’s rampage, especially Sidney Prescott. “Sidney’s the heart and core of this story,” Williamson said. From the beginning, Ghostface orchestrated a series of murders around Prescott, which forced her from survivor to resilient and resourceful final girl.
It’s in the Genes.
The stakes escalate when Sidney is forced to protect her family, including her teenage daughter, Tatum (Isabel May), and her husband, police chief Mark (Joel McHale), from Ghostface. She’s moved her family far from Woodsboro and has lived off the radar, running a coffee shop in Pine Grove, Indiana, but now that Tatum is the same age as Sidney was in 1996, Ghostface wants to reboot the franchise in real life. Sidney has sheltered Tatum from all the trauma, but inevitably, as soon as the bloodbath begins again, she’s thrust into fight mode, and anyone in their midst could be the killer behind the mask.
The film assembles a cast of notables, including McKenna Grace and Celeste O’Connor, both veterans of the fright genre who have appeared in the Ghostbusters reboots. Sam Rechner and Asa Germann, the boyfriend and the “sexy” true-crime fanatic, are the likeliest suspects, but there are also the grown-ups in the group. Anna Camp is a close friend of Sidney’s; their neighbor, Timothy Simons, is Tatum’s overbearing drama teacher; and Mark (McHale), the dutiful husband, may be harboring a secret. The Meeks-Martin Twins aren’t off the suspect list either, recruited by Gale to follow her around as her news-gathering interns.
Eventually, all heck breaks loose! Ghostface relentlessly hunts down Tatum and her friends, making short work of anyone who might get in their way! Even as Sidney and Gale follow every lead to solve the mystery of a resurrected Stu Macher, AI be damned, it soon becomes painfully clear that this is far more personal than anyone could have anticipated. In a shocking series of chase sequences that pay homage to the slasher genre, especially Halloween, it all comes down to the murderous reveal. The who-dun-it formula that has made Scream a breakout success for 3 decades, and what everyone is waiting for, may trip up the most diehard fan, but it no doubt opens the door.
With a box office opening that broke all expectations, you can bet audiences haven’t heard the last scream.
Get your #FansEyeView of the Final Trailer for Scream 7 here:
Stay tuned for the upcoming OUT LOUD & Live! with JC Alvarez podcast interview featuring Padraic Maroney @basedonabookbypadraic, the author who literally wrote the book on the franchise “It All Began with a Scream” coming this week.
SCREAM 7 | directed by Kevin Williamson and starring Neve Campbell, Courtney Cox, Isabel May, and Joel McHale, is in theaters now nationwide.
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