I’ve always said that they could make Scream movies until the end of time and I’ll show up for every single one. While that statement is true, I also believe that even good things need to come to an end. And boy do they need to let this franchise rest in peace.
Scream 7 takes us back to Sidney Prescott, or Evans as she goes by now, living in Pine Grove, Indiana. She struggles with being a good mother to her teenage daughter, Tatum, whilst owning a coffee shop in small town middle America. She’s living the American dream under a cloud of post traumatic stress. When Stu Macher’s old house goes up in flames with two people inside and the calls from Woodsboro start up again, Sidney doesn’t believe it is real until the dead bodies start piling up.
As with every other Scream film in this franchise, this film sets up as many red herrings as it can as would be killers. Each ends up dead and this film really wants the viewer to believe that Stu Macher did not die by having a TV fall on his face and electrocute him. It wants us to believe he ended up in a mental institution with memory loss right where Sidney managed to settle into small town life – halfway across the country from his California home. It’s too big a coincidence to be real. Right?
Gale Weathers does her investigative journalist best (even though Sidney’s husband is a literal police officer who could easily have made a call under official pathways) and finds out that the intake paperwork at the Woodsboro morgue after Stu died in 1996 has suddenly gone missing. Or never existed in the first place. This information comes right before ever single teenage red herring suspect dies at the hands of the actual masked killer. Stu’s alive? Really?
Nope. I’m about to get into some real spoilers so if you don’t want to know who the killer is before you see the movie, stop reading. You’ve been warned.
When the finale finally arrives, the killers are three people this time. A random mental patient who escaped the mental institution Stu supposedly ended up in. The institution’s orderly who escorts Gale and Sidney to the patients room after he dies trying to kill Sidney’s family is also in on the kills. But it is Sidney’s small town friend Jessica (Anna Camp) who is the mother of one of Tatum’s friends is the surprise third killer who used Sidney’s book from Scream 4 as her personal mantra and landed herself in the mental institution after murdering her own husband. This plot twist is by far the dumbest, most nonsensical ending in the franchise. I knew the moment I saw Anna Camp as Jessica on screen that she would end up the killer. She was in none of the marketing and the film set up her creepy horror loving son as a red herring which seemed to bother her. And when that orderly, played by Ethan Embry, escorted Gale and Sidney through the hospital, he just seemed really off. Not in a quirky Stu or freaky film student Mickey kind of off, but in a yeah-this-guy-is-an-accomplice kind of off. So obvious you almost doubt it, but not really.
How did they incorporate Stu, you ask? With AI. They recreated him, Mrs. Loomis, and Sidney’s brother using AI to mess with Sidney. Did it work? Not really because at this point, Gale and Sidney aren’t stupid. They’ve seen it all and lost too many loved ones at the hands of crazy people. This film could have gone all in and told some meta commentary on the pitfalls of AI in a world controlled by the media we consume much in the way the first film tried to use the movies-made-me-do-it defense. No such luck, here. This film is nowhere near smart enough to be that big of a game changer.
While I loved seeing Neve Campbell back at center stage as Sidney and I enjoyed the dynamic between her and her daughter, I could have done without the rest. All the meta aspects of this franchise are gone leaving us with some good kills put in between Kevin Williamson’s standard tension and little else. We love Scream, but there is such a thing as too much of a good thing.
3 very generous stars out of 5 because I love Sidney and Neve Campbell.
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Becky Tyler Art and Photography 
I’ve always said that they could make Scream movies until the end of time and I’ll show up for every single one. While that statement is true, I also believe that even good things need to come to an end. And boy do they need to let this franchise rest in peace.
Scream 7 takes us back to Sidney Prescott, or Evans as she goes by now, living in Pine Grove, Indiana. She struggles with being a good mother to her teenage daughter, Tatum, whilst owning a coffee shop in small town middle America. She’s living the American dream under a cloud of post traumatic stress. When Stu Macher’s old house goes up in flames with two people inside and the calls from Woodsboro start up again, Sidney doesn’t believe it is real until the dead bodies start piling up.
As with every other Scream film in this franchise, this film sets up as many red herrings as it can as would be killers. Each ends up dead and this film really wants the viewer to believe that Stu Macher did not die by having a TV fall on his face and electrocute him. It wants us to believe he ended up in a mental institution with memory loss right where Sidney managed to settle into small town life – halfway across the country from his California home. It’s too big a coincidence to be real. Right?
Gale Weathers does her investigative journalist best (even though Sidney’s husband is a literal police officer who could easily have made a call under official pathways) and finds out that the intake paperwork at the Woodsboro morgue after Stu died in 1996 has suddenly gone missing. Or never existed in the first place. This information comes right before ever single teenage red herring suspect dies at the hands of the actual masked killer. Stu’s alive? Really?
Nope. I’m about to get into some real spoilers so if you don’t want to know who the killer is before you see the movie, stop reading. You’ve been warned.
When the finale finally arrives, the killers are three people this time. A random mental patient who escaped the mental institution Stu supposedly ended up in. The institution’s orderly who escorts Gale and Sidney to the patients room after he dies trying to kill Sidney’s family is also in on the kills. But it is Sidney’s small town friend Jessica (Anna Camp) who is the mother of one of Tatum’s friends is the surprise third killer who used Sidney’s book from Scream 4 as her personal mantra and landed herself in the mental institution after murdering her own husband. This plot twist is by far the dumbest, most nonsensical ending in the franchise. I knew the moment I saw Anna Camp as Jessica on screen that she would end up the killer. She was in none of the marketing and the film set up her creepy horror loving son as a red herring which seemed to bother her. And when that orderly, played by Ethan Embry, escorted Gale and Sidney through the hospital, he just seemed really off. Not in a quirky Stu or freaky film student Mickey kind of off, but in a yeah-this-guy-is-an-accomplice kind of off. So obvious you almost doubt it, but not really.
How did they incorporate Stu, you ask? With AI. They recreated him, Mrs. Loomis, and Sidney’s brother using AI to mess with Sidney. Did it work? Not really because at this point, Gale and Sidney aren’t stupid. They’ve seen it all and lost too many loved ones at the hands of crazy people. This film could have gone all in and told some meta commentary on the pitfalls of AI in a world controlled by the media we consume much in the way the first film tried to use the movies-made-me-do-it defense. No such luck, here. This film is nowhere near smart enough to be that big of a game changer.
While I loved seeing Neve Campbell back at center stage as Sidney and I enjoyed the dynamic between her and her daughter, I could have done without the rest. All the meta aspects of this franchise are gone leaving us with some good kills put in between Kevin Williamson’s standard tension and little else. We love Scream, but there is such a thing as too much of a good thing.
3 very generous stars out of 5 because I love Sidney and Neve Campbell.
Discover more from Becky Tyler Art and Photography
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
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