MARCH 5, 2026
GENRE: SLASHER
SOURCE: MY OWN THOUGHTS!
As I did for the last one, I thought I would write a second "review" of sorts for Scream 7 where I go in detail about my issues with the film's third act, since (also like S6) I think the film is really good until the reveals start coming in, at which point the movie nosedives. I don't think it's AS crippling as the last one, because the reveal there was not only weak but also once again revealed the characters to be idiots (as I mentioned in my traditional review: the fact that it was Richie's entire family means that Sam, Kirby, AND Gale all managed to somehow remain ignorant of their existence, despite dating, investigating, and writing about him, respectively), and this one is merely just weak. But considering this was Kevin Williamson's grand return to the series, I can't help but feel more disappointed that the screenwriter's big unmasking was the least surprising in this entire franchise.
Spoilers begin... NOW!
OK, so if you're still here you either know or simply don't care that the mastermind was Jessica (Anna Camp), with Marco (Ethan Embry) as her muscle/right-hand man. They also had another guy helping them earlier whose name I already forgot, but seeing a Ghostface killed 40 minutes in was a great surprise (as was the reveal of who was driving the van that hit him) and his anonymity was part of the point, so there's nothing to complain about there. But in Camp and Embry's case, I can't imagine there's a person alive who would be surprised to see their faces under the masks, given that they are both recognizable actors who were playing absolute nothing roles. Especially Embry, whose sole purpose (and *only* scene prior) is to show up and try to convince Sid (read: the audience) that Stu is still alive, a concept I never believed for a second.
Camp at least has a little more to do, as Sid's neighbor/BFF who Williamson and Guy Busick thankfully bothered to give I think three scenes sprinkled into the narrative. But they make the same dumb mistake that they did in 6, which is to have Camp shoehorn in some backstory about their past that is too extraneous to buy as traditional character development, and merely points a big arrow at their head reading "KILLER!" As soon as she says something about having an abusive ex (just as Quinn randomly dropped the fact that she had a dead brother), we know that's going to be crucial information, and it's a shame to recall that Williamson used to be so much better at this. When Billy mentioned his mother leaving in the original, it never once came off as a clue - it played exactly as it was meant to; a clunky attempt at sympathizing with Sid re: her own mother's death, with few being being tipped off that there was any more to it.
And really, they could have fixed it easily by simply having Jessica say that she first "met" Sid when the latter was posing as Laura for her crisis hotline stint in Scream 3. Even if it wasn't the same guy, we (sadly) know how many women tend to leave one abusive partner only to end up with another (the one she refers to here is also the father of her teen son, so unless she stuck with him for a decade or so, the time wouldn't work), so it still could have played as a "how they met" thing without raising any alarms. Bonus: it would have made Jessica's grand plan a little tragic on top of everything else. She's apparently upset that Sid gave up being a Final Girl (by sitting out of New York, a recurring theme in the movie) and wants Tatum (Sid's daughter) to take over as America's premiere survivor, which is kind of silly even for these things, but at least could have been a bit sad if Jessica had spent the past 25 years worshiping Sid for helping her with her own struggles only to be crushed by the latter's decision to live a normal life instead of continuing to fight Ghostfaces.
All that said, I can forgive the "why" if the "who" is at least satisfying. As stupid as the whole "Stu survived!" thing was to me, it would honestly be better to do a repeat killer than have two people we've barely met take off the masks, with their recognizable faces ("It's the Pitch Perfect girl!") doing the majority of the work for whoever in the audience might not have figured it out long before that. I didn't exactly take a stopwatch to the screening, but I'd bet $63.6m that no previous Ghostface has had less screentime than either of the main culprits here (again, the other guy was anonymous by design so I don't care about him). It just baffles me that no one involved thought to say "Hey, fans love going back and figuring out which killer performed which kill, and that can't happen here because neither killer had enough involvement with the story for their whereabouts to be determined at any given time." Again, Embry is in ONE SCENE! Who could possibly be satisfied with that reveal?
As for Stu, as I mentioned in my main review, Matthew Lillard is clearly having a good time reprising his role, and he hasn't lost any of that manic energy (if you've followed his later work, he's actually a solid and fairly subtle dramatic actor, so it's fun to see him go big again). It's a shame that pre-release casting news spoiled most of the other cameos from now-dead cast members (there was one they didn't, and it was a great little "Whoa!" moment for me), because it basically answered the movie's central mystery of "Is Stu really alive or is this AI?" right from the start. We know without a doubt that Dewey, Roman, etc. are dead (Stu is, I think, the only GF with the slightest chance of having survived) but thanks to pre-release publicity we also know they're going to be in it, and this isn't a supernatural series. So therefore, AI/deep-fake nonsense will be coming into play, and in turn Stu is clearly among the killer's pixelated creations. Without their casting known (David Arquette even has his name on the poster!), if Stu was the only returning "dead" person, the mystery could have actually worked to some degree. For a series that started as a commentary on horror films and their fans, it's weird that Scream 7 would actually work best if you watched it in a total vaccuum and (re: the two killers) without having seen any other movies besides the previous Screams, so that Embry and Camp wouldn't be any more recognizable to you than the handful of newcomer actors playing Tatum's friends.
Speaking of them, I will give the movie this much of a win over S6: at least the deaths are all of named characters. Yes, Ghostface is once again incapable of killing anyone we really like (Joel McHale, welcome to the "Somehow survived several brutal stabbings" club!), but I was surprised that literally ALL of Tatum's friends get killed off. The body count is a little lower than the last one, but I'll always take 5-6 named characters over a dozen randos. It's a little weird how they're spaced out though; after the surprisingly early death of Hannah (McKenna Grace's character) - which was far and away the best designed one, very Argento-y - no one dies for a bit and then he wipes out the rest of her friends in a matter of minutes right as the third act kicks into gear. Paying homage to The Burning, maybe? (On the subject of the body count: once we get the motive, we then realize the opening kill is pointless. Why would Sid care about that?)
Like I said in the main review, the movie mainly won me over thanks to the Sid and Gale stuff, but the more I think about the whole Ghostface plot, the sloppier it feels, so it might end up slipping back under 6 over time. I was happy to see a scarier and more stalker-y version of the guy again, but when it's all in service of such a weak killer plot, with absolutely ZERO tension to the mystery of who was behind it, I suspect that stuff won't be as fun on repeat viewings, especially when (again) there's no possible way to determine which one was responsible for this or that kill. The monster opening weekend practically guarantees another one, so I hope when that day comes that they really take their time to come up with a solid mystery again. Give us the red herrings! Give us a scene where one killer is trying to convince Sid (or whoever) that the other person is the killer! GIVE US A REASON TO REWATCH THE DAMN THING!!!
What say you?
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