“Legacy doesn’t always have to be a bad thing,” says Kirby Reed in Scream VI. Well, replies Scream 7, hold my knife. 

Baggage is part of the deal with Scream, but even in a franchise built on three decades of suitcases and hat boxes, there can be a bit too much. Scream 7 arrives with an unusually large amount of baggage; the franchise coping with behind-the-scenes turmoil and having six films of twisted history to build on and beat.

It’s not the first time the franchise has had to set down some new ‘rules’, but accommodating all of it doesn’t prove to be a total success seventh time around. The trilogy set up by 2022’s Scream (5), a neat reboot that mixed legacy with compelling new characters, is well and truly scrapped. Having already lost those two films’ directors, Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett, the extraordinary and well-publicised dismissal of Melissa Barrera for social media comments, and subsequent loss of Jenna Ortega and the replacement director Christopher Landon left a fanbase fuming, flummoxed as much as Spy Glass Media and Paramount reeling. 

Expensive restructuring, and the return of franchise veterans Neve Campbell as Sydney Evans (nee Prescott) and Kevin Williamson, the franchise creator, directing an entry for the first time, may result in a box office boost (pushing the series over $1 billion) for what was a resurgent franchise. But those vocal in their opposition to the firing of Barrera, and casual but concerned fans, are unlikely to be pacified by the fact that the self-inflicted changes don’t work for the better.

Scream 7 Summary

Stu Macher’s old house, famous for the murderous reveals and bloodbaths at the climax of Scream and Scream 5, has inevitably become an Airbnb. Unlucky for the horror-fan boyfriend and his reluctant girlfriend that a new Ghostface chooses that night to surface and burn down 30 years of nostalgia. 

The next day, Sidney Prescott-Evans (Neve Campbell) may have relocated her family to Pine Grove, Indiana, but is struggling with her teenage daughter, Tatum (Isabel May), when she receives a phone call from an unknown number. “Hello, Sidney…” But this time, the killer isn’t hiding, and a videocall suggests a scarred and older Stu Macher (Matthew Lillard) survived his head being crushed by a TV decades before and is intent on stabby revenge. An attack on Sidney’s house ends with the arrival of Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox) and the Meeks-Martin twins (Jasmin Savoy Brown and Mason Gooding). In a new town, the survivors have to confront the ghosts of three decades before. 

Trading barbs

“This time,” as Mindy (early franchise-comic relief Randy Meeks’ niece and protege) breaks down for us, “it’s all about nostalgia.” But there’s more than that. As VI had its fun with giallo, here Williamson conjures up a rather dreamy gothic vibe. Away from the Halloween-style house facades and falling leaves, there’s a pivotal Grand-Guignol murder, and an acutely dramatic Ghostface floating through houses and, crucially, not speaking under the mask. There’s also a trip to a mental institution, tales of drifters and roadtrip pilgrimages set on murder.

The franchise has been spinning multiple plates of meta-layering for a while, doffing its cap to horror trends here and poking at the legacy of franchise progression there. With Scream 7, between the heavy gothic overtones and a forced obsession with nostalgia (even more than normal), it really lags. 

That’s not to say there aren’t highlights. It remains a fantastic communal viewing experience, and the Scream franchise never lets its quality dip too much. There hasn’t been a bad entry, including Scream 7, but they are different beasts.

Campbell’s absence for the sixth film looks like a franchise masterstroke as she dives back in to save her family. Sydney’s daughter may be central to her thoughts, but this doesn’t feel like the passing of a torch; the emphasis is very much on Sidney Prescott, the franchise’s Final Girl. We’re told that quite literally. 

There are barbs about her missing “Brutal” New York—the previous instalments are referenced several times, even if Sam and Tara don’t receive a direct namecheck—and the use of modern tech and concerns to target the nostalgia on the old guard feels inherently Scream. Behind the camera, Williamson serves up continual building tension, with solid jumps, misdirection and gruelling deaths—head piercings are particularly popular. And, is that an extended kitchen hunt paying tribute to Jurassic Park?

But there’s nothing in Scream 7 to compare with the ladder scene or Subway set-piece of the sixth film. That instalment didn’t have a fantastic reveal, but it was better set up than this: With nostalgia forced on us at every turn, the resolution leaves this the weakest in the franchise (and leaves some of the deaths inexplicable). 

The nostalgia climaxes in a very graphic conclusion to one of the franchise’s long-running jokes. That doesn’t seem quite enough, and on the way, the meta levels are disappointingly light—Mindy tries, but her best line is a Wuthering Heights joke—and this feels like a comfortable embrace of Halloween rather than the smart dissection of the slasher subgenre that kicked it all off. If anything, despite the wishful rural horror suggested by A Texas Chainsaw Massacre playing at the nearby movie theater, the vibes are Halloween: H20, perhaps a sign that even in the crush of creating it, this took being the seventh film a bit too seriously.

The pre-title Airbnb sequence is the best bit, with the handbrake back to old characters really robbing it of the vim that the Barrera-Ortega era really brought to the franchise. While the billowing sheets and classic horror veneer help vaseline Scream 7’s lens, it all feels a bit tired. Paramount’s meta-horror franchise needs to think outside the box for the blades to fly again.