Reviews

After sitting out of Scream VI, the slasher horror franchise’s original scream queen Neve Campbell is back.

After outings in Woodsboro, Ohio, Hollywood and New York, the seventh instalment is set in Pine Grove, a small Indiana town where Sidney Prescott, now Sidney Evans, has created a new life for herself with her police captain husband Mark (Joel McHale), teenage daughter Tatum (Isabel May) and two young children.

When the Ghostface killer emerges in Pine Grove claiming to be Stu Macher (Matthew Lillard) – who presumably died in 1996’s Scream – Sidney must confront her past and go up against Ghostface once again.

Campbell was the lead character in the first four Scream instalments, but was then relegated to a supporting legacy character in the 2022 revival Scream. When she sat out of the sixth film due to a pay dispute, it was explained that Sidney had gone into hiding to protect her family.

So Scream fans will be thrilled to see the horror franchise’s beloved final girl Sidney front and centre once again. She has always been the heart of these movies, and Scream 7 rightfully refocuses the story on her.

Directed by the original’s writer, Kevin Williamson, the film revolves around the fraught relationship between Sidney and her daughter. There is a distance between them, caused by Sidney’s overprotectiveness and reluctance to talk about the past, but there’s no better bonding experience than taking on a killer!

The opening kill sequence is a hallmark of the Scream franchise and this one does not disappoint. It is different, meta and much longer than usual. It takes place in Stu Macher’s former home – the site of the original Woodsboro massacre – which true crime nerds can now rent for a horror experience. You can imagine what comes next!

After such a strong start, the rest of the film is a mixed bag. A couple of the kills are memorable, but the majority are predictable and underwhelming, and the script is sometimes clever and funny and sometimes weak and cliched. It’s so inconsistent.

Like each instalment, we are introduced to a ton of new characters, but the newcomers are pretty disposable and forgettable outside of the Evans family.

They are stock characters ready to be murdered by Ghostface or unmasked as the killer, but they are so thin and generic that you don’t really care about what happens to them.

Thankfully, Gale Weathers is also back, having miraculously survived her encounter with Ghostface in New York, alongside Jasmin Savoy Brown and Mason Gooding as twins Mindy and Chad, her new TV crew. They are amusing as the comedy duo who speculate on the line-up of suspects, and Cox has some good scenes with the reliable Campbell.

Interestingly, the film does not try to explain where our previous leads, Sam and Tara Carpenter, are following the events of New York. But perhaps the writers didn’t want to acknowledge Melissa Barrera’s firing or Jenna Ortega’s departure.

The story is solid, the inclusion of deceased characters is respectful, and it’s great to see Campbell back as Sidney. However, you can’t help but shake the feeling that you’ve seen it all before and that it could have been better, especially when you reach the most anticlimactic reveal in the entire franchise.

While there are some good moments in this, Scream 7 proves that the franchise needs to take a break for a while. It has become too caught up in its own nostalgia and is clearly running out of steam. It doesn’t necessarily need to end for good, but a substantial time off will allow the team to give us something creative, inspired and interesting.

In cinemas from Thursday 26th February

By Hannah Wales

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