Scream 7 (18)

Terror comes full circle for Sidney Prescott-Evans, one of the survivors of the original Ghostface(s). She has built a new life in the quiet town of Pine Grove, far from Woodsboro, with her 17-year-old daughter Tatum. A new Ghostface killer emerges with a diabolical plan that involves targeting Tatum and everyone that Sidney loves. To protect her family and old acquaintances including Gale Weathers, Sidney must confront her past and unmask the source of years of bad blood.

LondonNet Film Review

Scream 7 (18) Film Review from LondonNet

In some cultures, seven is considered a lucky number. In the rabidly self-self-self-referential pop culture that the Scream films embrace with tongue wedged firmly in lacerated cheek, seven is the most crushingly disappointing number. For long stretches, the first instalment with original screenwriter Kevin Williamson in the director’s chair is a slickly executed blast with some satisfyingly squelchy kills. Unfortunately, one key sequence derails the entire picture and Scream 7 never recovers…

Sidney Prescott-Evans (Neve Campbell), one of the survivors of the original Ghostface killer(s), has relocated to the picture postcard town of Pine Grove to run a neighbourhood coffee shop and raise her sassy 17-year-old daughter, Tatum (Isabel May), with her police officer husband, Mark (Joel McHale). She politely tolerates interest from crime podcast junkies in her tragic past, luridly chronicled in the Stab films, but refuses to go into details about the people she has lost with Tatum. Consequently, mother and daughter find themselves at an emotional impasse, especially when it comes to Tatum’s boyfriend Ben (Sam Rechner).

“Just because you don’t trust people doesn’t mean people can’t be trusted,” Tatum angrily spits at her mother during their latest argument. A new Ghostface killer brazenly arrives in Pine Grove with a diabolical plan to target everyone that Sidney loves. To protect her family and old acquaintances including Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox), with whom Sidney has a “complicated but enduring” friendship, the stoic survivor must confront ghosts of her grim past and scrutinise the most obvious suspects: Tatum’s classmates Chloe (Celeste O’Connor), Hannah (Mckenna Grace) and Lucas (Asa Germann) and the school’s mean-spirited drama teacher (Timothy Simons).

Scream 7 welcomes back Campbell as the prime target of Ghostface’s machinations after a brief hiatus from the franchise. Her absence from the sixth film, set in New York City, is addressed head-on in dialogue between Sidney and Gale. “You’re lucky that you sat that one out – it was brutal!” snipes the no-nonsense news reporter, who bears visible scars from her near-fatal encounters with different maniacs since the opening foray in 1996. Returning twins Chad (Mason Gooding) and Mindy Meeks-Martin (Jasmin Savoy Brown) are introduced to knowingly explain the theme of the seventh picture – nostalgia – and venerate Sidney as a Scream Queen immortalised in the annals of Hollywood history.

At a critical juncture, Williamson’s picture inexplicably slits its own throat. The offending scene moves the plot forward with several minutes of spoken exposition. It’s a bewildering and infuriating misstep, all the more glaring when everything else in a script co-written by the director and Guy Busick is polished and punctuated by delectable peekaboo moments with the masked menace. I wanted to scream out loud but not for the visceral, nerve-shredding reasons intended.

– Kim Hu