Review: Scream 7

Image courtesy of Paramount Pictures.

Once upon a time, Wes Craven's "Scream" - which was scripted by Kevin Williamson, who has taken over directing duties here from Tyler Gillett and Matti Bettinelli-Olphin  - was a game changer, a relatively low-budget film that was to the horror genre what "Pulp Fiction" was to the movies in general just two years earlier.

The film's self-referential and meta nature - in which characters realize that they are living through a slasher movie and, therefore, know the rules, having grown up with such pictures as "Halloween" or "A Nightmare on Elm Street" - was praised for its originality and spawned numerous copycats, much like Tarantino's film did.

This year marks the 30th anniversary of that film with the release of "Scream 7," which has mostly made headlines due to its troubled production - the director quit after one of its new-generation leads was fired over comments criticizing Israel's treatment of Palestine and another quit shortly thereafter (possibly in solidarity).

Despite reviews that have been nearly as brutal as some of this latest entry's kills, "Scream 7" is not all that bad. The formula feels a little musty, but it's not the worst entry in the series - a franchise that, miraculously for horror movies, has yet to deliver an outright bad sequel. The film's first half is significantly better than its second, which becomes a bit rote and features what has to be the worst killer reveal in the series.

But it all starts out well with its cold open - a scene in all of the "Scream" films that is set apart from the rest of the action and typically features a character getting bumped off by Ghostface thereby setting off the killing spree - as two horror tourists played by Jimmy Tatro and Michelle Randolph stay at the home of Stu Macher, which was once the site of two bloodbaths but has now been turned into a tourist attraction with ghoulish chalk outlines where people were murdered and memorabilia from the "Stab" films that have been based on the Woodsboro murders.

Shortly after those two characters are dispatched, we learn that Sidney Evans (Neve Campbell), nee Prescott, is operating a small coffee shop in a generic town, living with her good-natured cop husband (Joel McHale), and trying to navigate having a rebellious teenage daughter, Tatum (Isabel May), who is named after Rose McGowan's character from the first film and has a boyfriend, Ben (Sam Rechner), who sneaks in her window just like Billy Loomis once did into Sidney's room.

Sidney has a neighbor pal (Anna Camp) with a slightly creepy son who is obsessed with true crime (Asa Germann), while Tatum's friends include characters played by Mckenna Grace and Celeste O'Connor. Just after the murders at the Macher house, Sidney gets a face-time call from none other than Stu (Matthew Lillard), one of the original "Scream" killers who died at the end of the original film. Sidney wonders whether Stu actually survived and is now taunting her and her daughter or whether someone else is using deep-fake A.I. to mask their true identity.

The attacks begin against Tatum's friends, and this latest "Scream" ups the ante on the gruesomeness - a character gets a knife in the skull at an agonizingly slow pace, another is disemboweled while swinging on a wire above a school stage, and a third is victim to what I believe is cinema's only death-by-beer-tap. Of course, the list of subjects is long - namely, all of the characters mentioned above as well as an employee (Ethan Embry) of the psychiatric hospital where Stu might possibly have been a patient.

Gale Weathers (Courtney Cox) makes a great entrance with the Meeks twins - played by Mason Gooding and Jasmin Savoy Brown - in tow, although they are sidelined later in the film as Sidney and her daughter face off against the Ghostface killers in their secluded, cookie-cutter town.

"Scream 7" has its moments, from its solid cold open to the joys of watching Campbell and Cox team up again. Lillard makes his moments count as Stu, who pops up in face-time messages to Sidney, while Gooding and Savoy Brown deliver some levity. The newer cast mostly exists as knife fodder, with May as the only exception.

But while this seventh entry in the series is not at the bottom of the list - my personal least-favorite was the fourth one - "Scream 7" easily features the worst killer reveal at its end. One character's motivation seemingly doesn't even exist, while another's is long, convoluted and not connected to anything else from the "Scream" movies.

The film tackles some thematic concepts in modern cinema as previous "Scream" films have - in this case, it's A.I. and nostalgia - but the one scene in which a character displays movie knowledge is quickly shut down by another. Overall, this is an OK "Scream" entry - not the worst, but far from the best. If anything, it's a series that still holds together due to its characters - while Melissa Barrera and Jenny Ortega are missed, it's good to see Campbell and Cox back in action.