{"id":501531,"date":"2026-02-26T20:20:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-26T20:20:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/501531\/"},"modified":"2026-02-26T20:20:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-26T20:20:08","slug":"scream-7-stabs-the-franchise-to-a-grisly-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/501531\/","title":{"rendered":"Scream 7 stabs the franchise to a grisly death"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Ghostface is back in the seventh Scream installment – but it hardly helps.Photo Credit: Jessica Miglio\/Supplied<\/p>\n

Scream 7<\/p>\n

Directed by Kevin Williamson<\/p>\n

Written by Williamson and Gary Busick<\/p>\n

Starring Neve Campbell, Isabel May and Mason Gooding<\/p>\n

Classification 14A; 115 minutes<\/p>\n

Opens in theatres Feb. 27<\/p>\n

There are some people who may want to avoid Scream 7 because it\u2019s scraping the bottom of the franchise barrel. This one is perhaps the dumbest of them all: just run-of-the-mill slasher fare only marginally improved by a couple of effective jump scares and the brand\u2019s cheeky self-referential humour.<\/p>\n

There are others who may want to avoid Scream 7 because they\u2019re answering the calls for a boycott, what with the contentious politically charged drama that played out behind the scenes and led to protests outside the film\u2019s premiere Wednesday night.<\/p>\n

Allow me to explain. Melissa Barrera, the next generation star of the fifth and sixth Scream movies, was set to return for the latest until she was fired by production house Spyglass Media for sharing pro-Palestinian sentiments on social media and accusing Israel of committing genocide. Barrera\u2019s co-star Jenna Ortega departed Scream 7 soon after the firing, as did director Christopher Landon. The movie\u2019s self-implosion earned the ire of fans who support Barrera and her position on Gaza, while leaving the production scrambling back to Neve Campbell, whose Sidney Prescott had been all but written out of the franchise.<\/p>\n

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Neve Campbell reportedly earn US$7-million to reprise her role as Sidney.Photo Credit: Jessica Miglio\/Supplied<\/p>\n

The original Scream queen famously exited the sixth installment because, as she made public, the producers wouldn\u2019t meet her salary expectations. But Barrera\u2019s firing and Ortega\u2019s subsequent departure opened the door for Campbell to cash in on a reported US$7-million payday, and enjoy a hero\u2019s welcome in Scream 7.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou were missed in New York,\u201d says the new version of Ghostface, the franchise\u2019s masked slasher, referring to Sidney\u2019s brief absence. \u201cIt\u2019s not the same without you.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re lucky you sat the last one out,\u201d adds Courteney Cox\u2019s tabloid journalist Gale Weathers. That line earned chuckles at the screening I attended, coming across like a backhanded jab at the Barrera and Ortega-led installment, which just happened to be the franchise\u2019s biggest box office hit, and also its best sequel since Scream 2.<\/p>\n

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Courteney Cox, back in her role as journalist Gale Weathers, earned chuckles at a recent screening.Photo Credit: Jessica Miglio\/Supplied<\/p>\n

Scream 7, on the other hand, bears all the traces of a hastily cobbled together screenplay that leans aggressively on nostalgia for the original trilogy, a strategic way to keep audiences from dwelling on the more recent movies. <\/p>\n

The opening and most effective kill sequence is staged in the same house terrorized by Skeet Ulrich\u2019s Billy Loomis and Matthew Lillard\u2019s Stu Macher in the first movie, which is now restaged as an Airbnb with chalk outlines, fake blood and paraphernalia from the Stab movies, the franchise\u2019s meta in-universe riff on Scream. That\u2019s where YouTube star James Richard Tatro enjoys playing a film bro geeking out, reciting the action from the original movie to his unimpressed girlfriend, played by Michelle Randolph. He also plants seeds of doubt about Stu Macher\u2019s demise, before meeting his own.<\/p>\n

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Isabel May (above) is the most captivating among the new additions, playing Sidney\u2019s teen daughter, Tatum.Photo Credit: Jessica Miglio\/Supplied<\/p>\n

Yep, Lillard is back playing his original villain, terrorizing Sidney over video calls. Whether his character actually survived having his head crushed by a television set nearly 30 years ago or is being conjured up by some AI deep fakery is a mystery that Scream 7 can barely make us care about, or even be surprised by. This, after all, is a franchise that regularly calls back characters who either inexplicably survive Ghostface\u2019s attacks or make posthumous appearances. And Scream 7 trots out a rogues\u2019 gallery of legacy players assumed long gone, as if to say everyone\u2019s welcome to return, except Barrera.<\/p>\n

Scream 7 also introduces a whole new cabal of characters (and suspects) circling Sidney, who is now an over-protective mom hiding out in Pine Grove, Indiana, a small town with the same vibes as the original Woodsboro. Isabel May is the most captivating among the new additions, playing Sidney\u2019s teen daughter, Tatum, who retraces mom\u2019s footsteps while putting up a valiant resistance to hand-me-down trauma.<\/p>\n

Tatum has a grit and charm about her reminiscent of a young Jennifer Lawrence. And her early scenes with Campbell bring some genuine warmth to the mother-daughter testiness the rest of the movie just doesn\u2019t know what to do with. It all just devolves into the routine red herrings and grisly maimings, none of which bring the sauce that filmmakers Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett poured over the last outing, when Ghostface did the most with dark New York alleyways, apartment complexes and overcrowded subways.<\/p>\n

Even the humour, largely served up by eager Scream 5 and 6 holdovers Mason Gooding and Jasmin Savoy Brown feels damp by comparison. The latter, the heir apparent to Jamie Kennedy\u2019s horror scholar Randy Meeks, can barely muster up the ritual monologue that typically plays like a state of the union address for film nerds. You know that moment where every Scream movie self-referentially lays down the intent and rules for whatever sequel, \u201crequel\u201d or current trend they\u2019re supposed to be skewering. This one\u2019s all about nostalgia, is all Brown\u2019s Mindy can come up with.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s as if they couldn\u2019t figure out any other justification for Scream 7 to exist, beyond paying Campbell what she\u2019s worth, or rather what it cost to fire Barrera.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: Ghostface is back in the seventh Scream installment – but it hardly helps.Photo…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":501532,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[49,48,75,17262,337,2922],"class_list":["post-501531","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-film-review","tag-movies","tag-noastack"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501531","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=501531"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501531\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/501532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=501531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=501531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=501531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}