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R
for strong bloody violence, gore, and language.
Starring
Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, Isabel May, Jasmin Savoy Brown, Mason Gooding
Director
Kevin Williamson
Producer
James Vanderbilt, William Sher
Genres
Horror
Thriller
Released by
Paramount Pictures on
2/27/2026
Nationwide
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Trailer
Review
Greedy and desperate for a box office payday, studio executives and their creatively bankrupt underlings have made Scream their latest sacrifice. Most fans will concede that it's a rare series that can keep the creative juices flowing seven installments deep. But instead of letting the franchise fade into the cemetery of horror memories, the filmmakers have exhumed the body and left it to rot in the sun. Truth be told, there hasn't been a genuinely good Scream entry since the first sequel - though Scream VI was better than most - but this is easily the bottom of the barrel.
Scream 7 has no plot to speak of; it's a mere casserole of tired horror clichés, doubling down on "stupid heroine" tropes and the myth of the unkillable human villain. With this outing, the series has fully embraced the very archetypes Wes Craven once delighted in lampooning. There is no satire to be found here; the film is a "grimdark" slog from start to finish, with the only vaguely amusing moment arriving during the final kill. The pacing is equally disastrous. After the obligatory opening murder, the narrative downshifts into 30 minutes of teen angst - a misguided attempt to flesh out secondary characters who aren't on screen long enough for the audience to learn their names, let alone care about their fates.
Since the leads from the previous two films did not return (following Melissa Barrera's firing and Jenna Ortega's departure), series co-creator and writer/director Kevin Williamson opted against a much-needed hard reboot. Instead, he retreated into nostalgia, bringing back mainstays Sidney Prescott-Evans (Neve Campbell) and Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox) and anchoring a flimsy "story" around them. They are joined by returning Meeks-Martin twins (Jasmin Savoy Brown and Mason Gooding) from Scream (5) and VI, alongside a boatload of distracting cameos including Matthew Lillard, Laurie Metcalf, Scott Foley, and David Arquette. Roger L. Jackson also returns to provide the iconic voice of Ghostface.
When the A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise grew stale, Wes Craven pivoted to the radical and inventive New Nightmare. That is the level of ingenuity sorely lacking here. For the most part, Scream 7 is a soulless, unimaginative exercise where the "meta" rules feel brief, obligatory, and shoehorned in.
When we catch up with Sidney, she's playing mother to her teenage daughter, Tatum (Isabel May), whose primary concerns are poking into her mother's past and figuring out when she can be poked by her boyfriend, Ben (Sam Rechner). Sidney has traded Woodsboro for the quiet of Pine Grove, raising a family with her husband, Mark (Joel McHale). But Ghostface casts a long shadow; when Sidney accepts a video call from the scarred visage of Stu Macher (Lillard), she is forced to confront a past she thought was buried. Once the killing spree begins in Pine Grove, Sidney girds for battle, joined by Gale Weathers, who appears just in the nick of time.
While the gore is copious, the tension is nonexistent, largely because there is zero investment in the ensemble. Even the film's most potentially suspenseful sequence - involving knives thrust through the wall of a confined crawlspace - is hamstrung by ineffective directing. Williamson, though a legendary horror scribe, is making only his second outing behind the camera (the other being 1999's Teaching Mrs. Tingle), and his lack of visual polish is evident. He hits the "money shots" well enough but botches the establishing moments, neutering the impact. The few jump-scares present are so forgettable I've already lost track of them, and I didn't hear a single gasp or nervous laugh from the theater audience.
Surprisingly, given the public salary dispute that kept her out of the previous film, Neve Campbell appears fully committed. While she doesn't quite reach Jamie Lee Curtis's "PTSD-survivor" heights from the Halloween reboot, she has her moments. Courteney Cox, however, is clearly going through the motions. Without Dewey, the character feels bland and uninteresting - a fact the script explicitly references - proving the series has regretted his exit ever since it happened. Everyone else, including the supposed future of the franchise Isabel May, is uneven at best and overmatched at worst.
The Scream series has historically been a reliable earner (excepting #4), but anticipation for this entry feels soft, and word-of-mouth is unlikely to be kind. Fans will likely be frustrated by the lack of innovation and the film's failure to deliver on its promotional promises. There's only so far you can take a slasher series without doing something truly off-the-wall. Since the studio refused to attempt a radical refit, we're left with this: a franchise-charring dumpster fire.
© 2026 James Berardinelli
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