Scream 7 may be the worst-reviewed movie of the series, but the franchise remains safe. It just had a terrific opening at the box office, assuring that yes, Scream 8 will probably happen sooner, rather than taking another 11-year break. On the other hand, Scream 7 also took three years to follow up the high-grossing Scream 6 because of unforeseen circumstances and corporate meddling. (The latter seems far from off the table with current Scream studio Paramount preparing to consolidate its power as a right-wing media empire.) Beyond those external forces, Scream 7 makes plenty of internal changes to the series, rendering the future of the franchise murkier than ever.

That’s true even when there’s supposedly a plan in place. Director and cowriter Kevin Williamson has said that he and Neve Campbell worked out the beginnings of an idea for Scream 8 while making Scream 7, but it’s worth noting that no Scream sequels have ever really followed the initial blueprint (with the possible exception of Scream 6, which arrived so quickly after the fifth there wasn’t much time to change course). For example, Williamson recently revealed the plans for a fifth and sixth movie he sketched out following Scream 4, whose box office underperformance put the whole series on ice; they involved bringing back Emma Roberts as Jill, killing off Dewey (which coincidentally did happen), and shifting focus to Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox). The original idea for Scream 3, about a teenage murder cult forming around a still-living Stu, was nixed after Columbine happened. And Scream 7, of course, was initially written to star Melissa Barrera and Jenna Ortega from the previous two installments, before Spyglass Entertainment popped off and fired Barrera, with Ortega following her out the door.

With that in mind, it’s worth sorting through where the franchise and its characters stand in the wake of Scream 7, as both a narrative within the movie’s world and (of course) a meta-narrative about itself.

[Ed. note: This post fully and completely spoils the ending of Scream 7.]

Who’s actually the core cast of a Scream movie these days?

The “requel” Scream (2022) and more traditional sequel Scream 6 (2023) rebooted the series with a new group that the characters themselves begrudgingly referred to as the “core four.” Scream 7 brings back half of those characters, but it’s almost weirder that siblings Mindy (Jasmin Savoy Brown) and Chad (Mason Gooding) show up, because they’re not allowed to mention the other half of their group: Sam Carpenter ( Barrera) and her half-sister Tara ( Ortega). Sam is the secret love child of original killer Billy Loomis, while Mindy and Chad are the niece and nephew of Randy Meeks (Jamie Kennedy), the resident horror geek of the first two movies.

A group of young people, including Jenna Ortega as Tara Carpenter, Melissa Barrera as her older sister Sam, and Mason Gooding as Chad, stand together on a crowded New York subway in a scene from Scream 6
Image: Paramount

As a foursome, they line up neatly with their predecessors: A haunted Sam is Dark Sidney, movie geek Mindy is a next-gen Randy, multi-stabbed Chad is similarly pin-cushioned Dewey, and his crush Tara is a diminutive Gale. (It’s even a little poignant, imagining the core original Scream stars if Randy had survived alongside Sid, Gale, and Dewey!) Campbell sat out Scream 6 due to a pay dispute, but as lousy as it was to hear about producers lowballing her, it also made creative sense for Sidney (Campbell), now married with children, to avoid the fray.

Scream 7 makes it clear that this ongoing story is now about Sidney with a side of Gale. There’s even dialogue that makes it sound almost like the killer in Scream 6 was pursuing Sidney in spirit, and she just didn’t show up for work. Ghostface, like a particularly petulant old-school fan, wants her back in the game at any cost. But that focus doesn’t preclude other franchise-famous faces from popping up. The movie’s pre-release press has not been shy about the presence of Matthew Lillard, whose manic co-killer Stu was seemingly finished off by a pre-flatscreen TV set in the first film. Here he’s an (over)extended red herring, appearing on video calls to taunt Sidney without a mask, claiming to be the killer. It’s great to see Lillard in the role again, appropriately made up with scars designed to get both the characters and the audience wondering if there’s maybe a way that Stu secretly survived the head-smashing.

Stu Macher (Matthew Lillard), grinning and sweating, holds up a gun in a scene from the first Scream where he's revealed as one of the masked killers.
Image: Paramount

He didn’t, of course. The movie leans too heavily on that question for the answer to be a resounding yes. Stu is just a deepfake, eventually joined by other haunted figures: Laurie Metcalf from Scream 2, Scott Foley from Scream 3, and David Arquette from the first five movies gamely pretend to reprise their roles on screens within the screen. There’s something cleverly Scream-y about having the real actors show up to play A.I. generations of their characters for cameos that simultaneously delight fans and psychologically torture Sidney. But the movie only opts for a superficial version of the latter, rather than exploring the more meta-minded former. The filmmakers don’t seem to have any particular theories, feelings, or playfully satiric ideas about AI, deepfakes, fandom, or horror movies, beyond that they do exist and could be used to nefarious ends.

But the broader culture disappears from Scream 7. No one even talks about what’s going on with the Stab franchise after 2022’s Scream established a culture war over the plot of Stab 8. (Surely it’s been rebooted as prestige TV by now?) The filmmakers are also unable to use several major new characters, seem skittish about introducing new ones, and are forced to resort to some simulations to briefly create a phony all-star ensemble. It’s a worst of both worlds situation: Lillard comes back but doesn’t get to play a real character or even much of a symbol.

Ultimately, Scream 7 does the weird trick of making everyone in the movie except Sidney feel like a minor guest star. Sam and Tara are gone. Mindy and Chad are there, but they don’t really fit. Gale inexplicably disappears for most of the climax. (Sidney runs to her daughter’s aid and Gale, who has an actual car at her disposal, somehow never catches up with her.) Tatum isn’t allowed to develop her own personality; mostly, she wants to be just like her mom, which is sort of an odd defining characteristic for a teenage girl. Other familiar faces are deepfakes. The core four has been reduced down to a single true star.

So if it’s not Stu, who was Ghostface this time?

Ghostface is a malleable concept in the Scream world. As the characters point out in Scream 7, it’s always someone the Final Girl knows, some element of her history honed into a blade. The most striking thing about the new movie’s revelation is how absolutely dull that blade is. Williamson does figure out one novel variation: Unlike any other Scream movie, this one features a Ghostface defeated around the 40-minute mark, when Sidney, her husband Mark (Joel McHale) and her daughter Tatum (Isabel May) successfully fight off the masked intruder, who is then abruptly struck by a van driven by Gale, making one hell of an entrance. The characters know this can’t be it — all but one Scream movie has featured at least two Ghostfaces — and so the mystery continues.

Eventually, per tradition, the killers go ahead and reveal themselves: Why, it’s Jessica! You know, Jessica: Sidney’s friend and next-door neighbor who has relatively few scenes but is played by recognizable performer Anna Camp (Pitch Perfect). Speaking of which: former teen star Ethan Embry (Can’t Hardly Wait) plays an attendant at a mental hospital where Sidney and Gale go sleuthing and receive some suspicious information that points at the possibility of Stu still being alive. Will this attendant appear again? Yes, he will, as Jessica’s other accomplice. (The third Ghostface, who dies early in the film, is an unstable patient from the facility.)

Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) looks distressed as she speaks into her cell phone in a scene from Scream 7
Image: Paramount

Jessica’s stated motivation is her idolization of Sidney, having read her survivor’s book, which inspired her to kill her abusive husband. When Sid receded from public life and sat out the events of Scream 6, Jessica decided to force her back in, and hopefully turn Tatum into a new Final Girl in the process. Again, the movie brings up an interesting idea: Sidney’s famous past requires her to be conscripted back into strangers’ role-playing fantasies of Final Girl empowerment. It hints at the way fans can find real catharsis in witnessing the horrific events of genre films, and may come to rely on them as an emotional release valve. But the story never really develops those ideas into anything provocative. The filmmakers can’t satirize the idea of a Final Girl unwillingly dragged back to her old role because they want us to feel good about it.

Where does Scream 8 go from here?

Every Scream movie feels like it’s supposed to serve as a last word on its subject. It’s not that the films are made without expectation of sequels or mutating horror-movie trends; they’re just designed to consume as much of their own tail as possible. So it’s not surprising that Scream 7 doesn’t end by explicitly teasing whatever idea Campbell and Williamson supposedly have cooked up. Still, the sheer tiredness of Scream 7 still inspires questions about what the inevitable Scream 8 will look like.

Examining its fellow slasher series doesn’t offer many clues. The Nightmare on Elm Street series never got to part eight, unless you count Freddy vs. Jason. For the eighth Friday the 13th, Jason took Manhattan; Scream has already been there, right down to having most of it played by Canada. The eighth Halloween movie might be the most instructive comparison: It, too, followed an installment co-written by Williamson where the series’ signature scream queen returns as a traumatized middle-aged woman. It unceremoniously offered up Laurie Strode in the first 15 minutes.

Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) stands in front of a series of windows, with the masked Michael Myers waiting on the other side, in a scene from Halloween: Resurrection (2002).
Image: Dimension Films

I don’t think Sidney Prescott will die in Scream 8. This series has handled its regulars a bit more gently than other slashers; though there are few viable alumni left to bring out, it still took two movies to kill Randy and another three before they could go after Dewey. That’s one of Scream’s charms — or was, until marketing (and screenwriting) tried to sell Campbell’s return as a feel-good story, and Sidney’s return as a serious examination of trauma. I’m not advocating for the smug cutesiness of so many unfunny, unscary horror comedies, but how has there not yet been a Scream set a horror con? Scream 3 took on Hollywood in 2000. Scream 8 could do something similar in… 2027?

After all, if no one has any fun, it doesn’t really make sense to keep making Scream movies at all. Williamson may yet surprise us, but even at its best, Scream 7 makes it hard to picture a good Scream 8. The slasher series’ zombie era may have already begun.

Scream 7 is in theaters now.