“Mom, did that really happen to you? Like in the movie?”

Story: It’s been almost thirty years since Sidney Prescott went through a living hell in her hometown of Woodsboro. Now she’s all grown up, with kids of her own. Most importantly, a teenage daughter named Tatum (after her high school BFF). But, of course, Sidney can’t simply relax; she’s still getting calls from nutters thinking they’re hilarious when they try to spook her. Though one caller seems a bit too real…and when the bodies start stacking yet again, Sid and Gale try to figure out what’s going on, before Tatum experiences what happened to her namesake.

Genre I’d put it in: Worn Out Sequels
Release Date: 2026
Remake, Sequel, Based-On, or Original: Based on/part of the Scream franchise. As it says in the title, the seventh film therein.

Gotta say: Damn this feels tired. The theme of this film is “nostalgia”, but instead of getting warm fuzzies, I got the driving need to re-watch the first couple of original films. In a huge movie theater where I was one of five on opening day? I did something I don’t like to do, and rarely feel the need to. I checked my watch three times. I don’t think anyone noticed, or cared.

Okay fine. So things start up rather promising. The teens – Isabel May as Tatum, Sam Rechner as boyfriend Ben, Mckenna Grace as BFF Hanna, Asa Germann as neighbor Lucas, and Celeste O’Connor as BFF2 Chloe (and my daughter surrogate of the film) – all have commanding onscreen presence. In particular, I was rooting for Hanna and Chloe from the start, and not just because I’d seen their performers in other roles, namely the Ghostbusters reboot for both. It’s that these young ladies seem to have an innate talent for connecting with audiences. I cared about what happened to them, which can’t exactly be said for everybody else I just listed. I latched on to the two who had the greatest ability to grab my waning interest. Let’s call this my special shout-out for this review.

As the character around whom the plot seems to be revolving, May’s Tatum does a great job with what she’s given, but she’s basically just the Girl In Trouble. Other new characters mimic ones from the first three films, and while some performers are allowed to flex a bit, as I’ve said before, most aren’t written well enough to stick in your head for long. Then there are the legacy characters from 1-4, and 5&6. Push them all together, and it’s absolute mayhem. Neve Campbell and Courtney Cox are able to channel Sidney and Gale effortlessly – of course they can, these two have been doing so for decades at this point. While absolutely nobody sucks here, way too many performers either don’t get enough screen time, or lines worth focusing on. There are a few other legacy characters you’ll see briefly, but unlike earlier films, these are basically cameos shoe-horned in so fans can do the Leonardo DiCaprio pointing at the TV thing. These moments bring nothing to the plot, except extended runtime. In these I felt like I was the living embodiment of what the kids call cringe.

There echoes of the original two films here, of course. Hell, the film opens with our typical opening scene fodder headed into “The Mocker House Experience”, a re-creation of Sidney’s home that’s an AirBnB-esque shrine to both the true crimes and the “Stab” in-universe film series. Naturally, they die bloody deaths. Nothing too gory, just your typical Scream level of red stuff. I couldn’t help but giggle as the “big-busted girl” ran up the stairs “instead of running out the front door”; an obvious homage to Sidney’s humorous skewering of horror tropes in the first film. But there’s one problem with these echoes. They hark back to when this franchise was actually playing satirical homage to the genre, when we were all laughing along. Recent films have been paying lip-service to skewering, instead grabbing for slasher boilerplate with both hands. And 7 has left any pretense of mockery or sarcasm, leaning all the way into the very tropes the once called out.

Do newbies need to call 411 in order to understand the lore of every single film that’s come before? Nah. Because it just doesn’t matter. Good guys, bad guys, in-between guys, they’re all trotted out for a fan service moment then they disappear. Joel McHale plays Sidney’s husband Mark…Evans. A change from the fan theory that Scream 3’s Mark Kincade would be Sid’s hubby. It’s a head-scratcher for fans, but newbies won’t notice. The only legacy character that serves the plot is Sidney, and even she’s only there for touchstone recognition. Oh, one more. That’s not a spoiler, because the actor’s name is on the damn poster; Matthew Lillard’s Stu. The plot device used to bring Stu back into the franchise is pretty darn effective, and I would have liked to have seen more done with it. Well, more done with it that didn’t feel like silly fan-service. Lillard is magnificent in the moments he’s onscreen, and to be honest, he’s the only performer over 25 that seems to be enjoying what he’s doing. I would like a supercut of his scenes, please. I’m sure I’ll get it.

I don’t have it in me to dust of any film school stuff; the film is competently made, I guess. It’s fine. It’s adequate. It could have used a bit of the ol’ judicious editing, and the music score was a bit too in-your-face (though I did enjoy a moment where the music went from non-diagetic to diagetic.) As with most money-grab sequels, the gore is amped up, at times feeling more like a Friday the 13th joint than a part of the Scream franchise. Those kills are at times awesome, though there’s one that had me rolling my eyes at the try-hardness of it all. (Hint: a beer tap is involved.) There are also a few “deaths” that end up with the characters surviving, and not only is it shrugged off, the majority of those characters seem a-ok less than an hour later. After the shocking ways a few characters survived 2022’s Scream and VI, it feels like writer/director Kevin Williamson just doesn’t give a damn at this point, and just lets the producers call the shots.

Let’s just say that even though Melissa Barrera was canned from 7 for a bullshit reason, and Jenny Ortega quit because of Melissa’s firing? They both dodged a bullet. Or knife. Ah hell, I’m not even energized enough to come up with decent puns. I’m not even editing this one, this is pure stream of consciousness. (As for those of you who are thinking “how’s that any different from the last ten years of your reviews?” That’s just about enough truth outta you, bubs.) Watch this one if you’re in the mood to just sit in a theater and watch a promising start dribble into lackluster pablum. Maybe take a couple shots before you walk in.

#Protip: The best thing to come out of this? Matthew Lillard’s vodka. Did I buy the collector’s set? You damn right I did. I needed the knife-in-a-potato pin. I am five years old.