“This is about nostalgia,” says Mindy Meeks-Martin (Jasmine Savoy Brown) to a group of frightened teens trying to understand what motivates the newest incarnation(s) of Ghostface in their bucolic hometown Pine Grove. Indeed, nostalgia is what the Scream series has been required to revert to after the New York situated “core four” of the previous film are no more. Nostalgia means that Kevin Williamson (the screenwriter of Wes Craven’s original film) is behind the camera and Sidney Prescott Evans (Neve Campbell) is once again bearing the brunt of the ‘sins’ of her mother which have now morphed into the sins of trying to be a mother and living a deliberately quiet life.
The cold opening, now a staple of the Scream franchise revolves around a couple (Michelle Randolph and Jimmy Tatro) renting the Macher House for the ultimate Stab experience. In case anyone has forgotten the showdown in 1996’s Scream it is related in detail to Mackenzie, a girlfriend only there to make her Woodsboro obsessed boyfriend happy. “This is where Sidney Prescott caved in Stu Macher’s (Matthew Lillard) head with a television set,” he excitedly relates. It’s also where Ghostface slaughters the couple and sets fire to the house – Woodsboro is done.
However, as we all know, Woodsboro is never done; even when it is done to death. Once again Sidney is having a fractious relationship with her eldest child, teenager Tatum (Isabel May) because Sidney is doing her best not to pass on what she has been through to her kids. Tatum sees this as her mom withholding who she is from her, while Sidney Evans, café owner, just wants to give her daughter a normal life; something she’s not doing as successfully as she should because her past experiences naturally colour her ability to trust others. She doesn’t particularly like Tatum’s boyfriend Ben (Sam Rechner), especially when he decides to climb through Tatum’s window jokingly quoting Billy Loomis. Sidney’s husband (and chief of police), Mark (Joel McHale) acts as much as an intermediary as he can between Sid and Tatum.
People tread lightly around Sid in Pine Grove. Her neighbour Jessica (Anna Camp) apologises for her son Lucas’ (Asa Germann) true crime obsession: although most people know Mrs Evan’s story because she wrote a memoir, the Stab films are based on her “life”, and Ghostface ensures her past will be present no matter how hard she tries to shield her kids from it.
Sid is used to getting prank calls by people pretending to be Ghostface, but when one call comes through and says they will happily reveal their identity, she’s not ready to see the face of an older and scarred Stu Macher vowing his revenge. “He’s dead,” is what everyone thought, but what if he wasn’t?
Ghostface comes as a pair (or sometimes more than a pair) so even if one of the killers is Stu, then there is a pool of suspects for the other killer. Is it Ben? Is it one of Tatum’s friends? Maybe it’s the perky Chloe (Celeste O’Connor), or the weirdo Lucas? It’s not Hannah (Mckenna Grace) as she and others have already ended up carved and eviscerated (one of the better set pieces in the film). The random guy Karl who is under a mask and dispatched by the searing entry of Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox) along with the Meeks-Martin twins Chad (Mason Gooding) and Mindy, doesn’t make sense. “It’s always someone you know,” as the rules state.
Kevin Williamson does a serviceable job as a director, but it’s hard to deny that nostalgia has become entropic. The self-awareness of the original film has stopped being a wink by Craven and turned into a strange parade of victim blaming in a never-ending slasher-soap. The closest person Sid has to a friend is Gale whose books ensured Sidney would never have a chance for a totally clean slate. The script goes so far as having Sidney apologise for not going to New York to put an end to another series of Ghostface killers because she feels guilty that Gale was injured. Tatum is infuriated that her mother didn’t prepare her to defend herself.
Thematically Scream 7 doubles down on Sidney Prescott Evans’ guilt and makes her complicit in the creation of every unhinged Ghostface. The plot requires Sidney to keep paying for something that wasn’t her fault and relishes in her taking charge because that’s her re-minted job as the final girl.
Sequel, requel, or whatever a Scream movie terms itself, it still needs to have a ‘whodunit’ aspect and an interest in the slasher genre. When a Ghostface in the previous instalment, Scream VI, spits, “Who gives a fuck about movies?” it does put the nail in the coffin for why Scream was a success in the first place. “Do you like scary movies?” is Ghostface’s catchphrase and it’s only uttered by an actor playing him in the buy-the-experience Macher House. Scream 7 doesn’t much care for scary movies, but Spyglass sure does care about people buying the experience no matter what the cost to Craven’s vision or the cost to the work Radio Silence did in crafting a new generation. Scream 7 is the disappointing ending (please) to a series that hamstrung itself and lost the point of why people liked it to begin with. Nostalgia isn’t fun when it’s all that’s left.
Director: Kevin Williamson
Cast: Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, Isabel May
Writers: Kevin Williamson, Guy Busick, (Story by James Vanderbilt & Guy Busick, based on characters by Kevin Williamson)
Producers: Paul Neinstein, William Sherak, James Vanderbilt
Composer: Marco Beltrami
Cinematographer: Ramsey Nickell
Editor: Jim Page
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