Scream 7

For the first time in the 30 years of this franchise, I have seen a bad Scream movie. Outside of all the behind the scenes mess and changing of hands this movie went through, I expected a little better from the writer of both the original and 5 and 6. I might’ve been a little drunk while watching this movie, but the fact I can tell it’s nothing special might be more of a testament to how bad it is. All the good ideas and sequences this movie has to offer are surrounded by a bunch of nothing characters that are mainly around to be red herrings and push the plot forward. Gale, Chad, and Mindy really didn’t need to be here, but without Sam and Tara, I guess there needs to be a thread connecting this to the last 2 movies. I get that they had to rewrite this movie around Sidney, but it gives the supporting cast little room to breathe. Tatum’s friends all get boxed into Scream-esque archetypes from the moment they are introduced and do nothing but make constant reference to it because “everybody’s a suspect.” Tatum herself gets more to do, and I think Isabel May does good enough with the conflict that comes with being Sidney’s daughter. There are a few ideas and moments that I liked from this movie; like the opening, parts of the AI angle, and how Sidney is dealing with both her past and present. In a better written movie, this might’ve all paid off to mean something in the end, but it doesn’t. It sounds like it all connects in concept, but the execution of all the ideas is jumbled and just fine at best. Matthew Lillard is utilized fine here, but the other dead characters that come back through AI feel very wasted.  All of this culminates in the very unsatisfying Ghostface reveal, two of which are characters who had one scene before their reveal. The motives are as bad as they’ve ever been, which says something in a series with both Roman and the Kirsch family. Although I like Jessica as a Ghostface and her motive wasn’t as dumb, it doesn’t save the final moments of this movie. I didn’t come into this wanting to hate it just because of the unjust firing of Melissa Barrera right as her character was just getting started. I gave this movie a fair shot outside of the bullshit, but this offers nothing new in a franchise known for setting the standard. It’s a disjointed mess that plays it too straight when it has the tools to be something so much more. This is a more of a rant than a review, but that happens when the franchise that made you love the genre falls off this hard.