Scream 7 poster. Image from The Playlist.

Now, onto the main problems with the movie for me. The other aspects of the story were not really making sense to me. Somehow they had the ghostface killers use very advanced AI and deepfake to make it seem faces from Sydney’s past, mainly Matthew Lillard’s character Stu Macher, were back to torment Sydney even more, Matthew killed it with his performance, as expected, it made you think his character was actually alive only to be revealed he wasn’t alive at all. The other characters they brought back using AI, David Arquette’s Dewey, Scott Foley’s Roman Bridger, and Laurie Metcalf’s Nancy Loomis were very much used for cheap nostalgia for the legacy Scream fans, a common trope used for film sequels nowadays. Another issue for me was Neve Campbell’s performance as Sydney. I didn’t care for it and it didn’t offer anything special. There were also some plot holes when Sydeny interviewed Gale Weathers, played by Courtney Cox, she got a call from fake Stu which led her to leave the interview, and Gale was not seen until the very end of the film when the main conflict was already solved. 

The biggest issue of the film by far was who the ghostfaces were and their motivations. The ghostfaces weren’t any of Tatum’s friends, instead they were side characters who you hardly cared for but all of sudden were important to the story. One was a patient in a mental institution named Marco Davis, played by Ethan Embry, who was a guide to Gale and Sydney around the mental institution. Oh, and there was a 3rd ghostface killer who got run over halfway through the film and he was a random guy also from the institution. The other ghostface was Sydney’s neighbor named Jessica Bowden, played by Anna Camp, who was on screen for three to-5 minutes before her reveal. She presented herself in the beginning as someone who’s annoyed that her son was interested with Sydney and the experiences she went through in Woodsborough. But when she is revealed as a killer all of the sudden she’s the one obsessed with Sydney. She read her book, and was also in Woodsborough during those events and was upset when she left. So for years she was trying to find her because she felt she escaped who she really was, the final girl. One other thing she did was she killed her own son because he shared similarities to her husband, who she also killed. 

While the performance by Anna Camp was good, the character I could not care for. The reason being that all of the sudden this new person who didn’t share real connections with Sydney and had only 1 not that memorable conversation with is now obsessed with her and was trying to find her this whole time. But then it’s revealed that she is not interested in Sydney being the final girl because she feels Sydney is out of her prime as the final girl. So she’s gonna make Tatum, Sydney’s daughter, the new final girl. I do feel like this plot point and motivation would have worked better if this motivation was given to someone relevant in the story and not a very irrelevant side character. It would have worked if they gave the motivation to Stu and he was really alive, or anyone else from Sydney’s past that we already know of. Sure it would make more plot holes as to how they're alive, but it’s a way for that motivation to work. 

But the best part of all of this is the conclusion this ghostface gets is a mother daughter takedown with both of them shooting her down. Marco also gets immediately shot in the head as soon as the final battle begins. Which gives him a very anticlimactic and abrupt ending. Like most of Scream, the majority of the film was enjoyable, but the ending made the whole film fall apart. The ending motivation wasn’t teased at all and was revealed out of nowhere and just made no real sense. 

This was a real eye opener for me, realizing that the Scream franchise is now running out of steam and it’s time to lay this franchise to rest because the things that they’re known for, the twists, are now falling apart and are getting uncreative. It is definitely making me more uncertain whether or not I will actually watch an 8th entry. Definitely shouldn’t have fired Melissa. So overall, if you want to be entertained, Scream 7 gives you that, but if you want clever writing and an intriguing mystery, this isn’t the film for you. So overall I’m going to give Scream 7 a 5.5/10. Scream? More like a little whimper.