Scream 7: All Blood, No Heart

With this latest entry Scream has become the type of movie it once satirized.

 I’ve been a fan of the Scream franchise since the first movies came out in 1996, 1997 and 2000 respectively.  If you grew up in the late 90’s/early 2000’s, then I’m sure you remember the ubiquitous Ghostface costumes that showed up every Halloween. I was that kid who somehow convinced his mom to purchase the full costume so I could then wear it to school. I was into it. However, as the seventh film in a franchise that turns 30 this year and following a fairly well received sixth film, the newest film in the franchise, Scream 7, is nothing short of a massive disappointment that struggles to articulate and justify its existence.

    Scream 7 was released February 27, 2026 and features Neve Campbell reprising her role as Sidney Prescott after a pay dispute led to her absence from Scream 6. While her rejoining the cast is marketed as honoring the franchise’s roots with a focus on legacy, it feels more like a step back. Scream 6 did something very interesting in getting away from the Sidney Prescott of it all, even if by necessity, and told a story that felt like a passing of the torch to our new leads. 

Her return now feels forced and inorganic with a strange narrative fixation on her absence from the previous film, to the point that multiple characters comment on it explicitly throughout the film. 

  We open the film in a location familiar to fans of the franchise, the former house of Stu Macher (Matthew Lillard), one of the two killers from the original Scream (1996). Keeping in tradition with this series, the opening scene introduces us to two characters that are quickly dispatched by the newest iteration of Ghostface. After a cut to black and the title cards, we are into the plot proper. We learn that Sidney is now living in Indiana with her police officer husband, Mark (Joel McHale) and their daughter, Tatum (Isabel May), doing her best to put Ghostface behind her. Sidney receives a video call from a surprisingly not dead Stu Macher who threatens Tatum. From here the movie more or less follows the standard Scream formula; we meet Tatum’s friend group, Gale Weathers (Courney Cox) and the Meeks-Martin twins (Jasmin Savoy Brown and Mason Gooding) show up, and bodies continue dropping. 

 Clearly the loss of the original leads, Melissa Barrera (Samantha Carpenter) and Jenna Ortega (Tara Carpenter), from Scream 5 and 6 early into the production of Scream 7, left the creative team scrambling. Barrera was fired in November of 2023 for pro-Palestinian posts on social media, with Ortega leaving the production shortly after. This massive shakeup in the cast led to a complete creative overhaul on the project that is evident in the final product.

 Controversy aside, Scream 7 suffers from seemingly having nothing new to say. In fact, this new iteration seemingly takes the time to insult you for even liking the past two films.

Where all the previous films have been meta satires of the horror tropes of their time, slashers, sequels, remakes, etc., this movie feels like a halfbaked remix of all the interesting bits from its predecessors without any of their charm or wit. There is no meta trend that this film is attempting to comment on and without a strong central concept it turns into just another slasher flick. While the kills themselves are engaging, one involving a sharp beer tap is particularly memorable, they are emblematic of the core issue with the movie; Scream has become the trope it was originally satirizing.  The actual killer(s) are uninspired and boring with motivations so paper thin that it strains the suspension of disbelief, even in a movie of this nature. The new “twist,” and the closest we get to anything satirical, is the usage of  AI/deepfake technology by the killer(s) to disguise themselves as former killers. However this feels hamfisted at best and utterly nonsensical at worst. 

     It’s not that Scream 7 is a terrible horror film; it kept me entertained enough through its 114 minute runtime and watching Matthew Lilliard chewing up the scenery is always delightful. In fact it’s the highest grossing film in the franchise with the 8th installment announced as I was writing this. Fact of the matter is that Scream 7 is just not a great Scream film, despite its competency, and feels out of place amongst the rest of them. The biggest sin this movie commits is just how derivative and forgettable it is, seemingly content to merely emulate past successes rather than take any chances on something new. With the next Scream movie already in production, we as the faithful audience, can only hope that they have found something interesting to say again.