{"id":454002,"date":"2026-03-02T18:47:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-02T18:47:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/454002\/"},"modified":"2026-03-02T18:47:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-02T18:47:10","slug":"how-it-sets-up-scream-8-spoilers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/454002\/","title":{"rendered":"How it sets up Scream 8 [Spoilers]"},"content":{"rendered":"

Scream 7<\/a> may be the worst-reviewed<\/a> movie of the series, but the franchise remains safe. It just had a terrific opening<\/a> 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<\/a> 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<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s true even when there\u2019s 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<\/a> while making Scream 7, but it\u2019s 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\u2019t much time to change course). For example, Williamson recently revealed the plans for a fifth and sixth movie<\/a> 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<\/a>, 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.<\/p>\n

With that in mind, it\u2019s worth sorting through where the franchise and its characters stand in the wake of Scream 7, as both a narrative within the movie\u2019s world and (of course) a meta-narrative about itself.<\/p>\n

[Ed. note: This post fully and completely spoils the ending of Scream 7.]<\/p>\n

Who\u2019s actually the core cast of a Scream movie these days?<\/p>\n

The \u201crequel\u201d Scream<\/a> (2022) and more traditional sequel Scream 6 (2023) rebooted the series with a new group that the characters themselves begrudgingly referred to as the \u201ccore four.\u201d Scream 7 brings back half of those characters, but it\u2019s almost weirder that siblings Mindy (Jasmin Savoy Brown) and Chad (Mason Gooding) show up, because they\u2019re 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.<\/p>\n

\"A
\n Image: Paramount<\/p>\n

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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

Scream 7 makes it clear that this ongoing story is now about Sidney with a side of Gale. There\u2019s even dialogue that makes it sound almost like the killer in Scream 6 was pursuing Sidney in spirit, and she just didn\u2019t 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\u2019t preclude other franchise-famous faces from popping up. The movie\u2019s pre-release press has not been shy about the presence of Matthew Lillard<\/a>, whose manic co-killer Stu was seemingly finished off by a pre-flatscreen TV set in the first film. Here he\u2019s an (over)extended red herring, appearing on video calls to taunt Sidney without a mask, claiming to be the killer. It\u2019s 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\u2019s maybe a way that Stu secretly survived the head-smashing.<\/p>\n

\"Stu
\n Image: Paramount<\/p>\n

He didn\u2019t, 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\u2019s 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\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

But the broader culture disappears from Scream 7. No one even talks about what\u2019s going on with the Stab franchise after 2022\u2019s Scream established a culture war over the plot of Stab 8. (Surely it\u2019s 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\u2019s a worst of both worlds situation: Lillard comes back but doesn\u2019t get to play a real character or even much of a symbol.<\/p>\n

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\u2019t really fit. Gale inexplicably disappears for most of the climax. (Sidney runs to her daughter\u2019s aid and Gale, who has an actual car at her disposal, somehow never catches up with her.) Tatum isn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

So if it\u2019s not Stu, who was Ghostface this time?<\/p>\n

Ghostface is a malleable concept in the Scream world. As the characters point out in Scream 7, it\u2019s always someone the Final Girl knows, some element of her history honed into a blade. The most striking thing about the new movie\u2019s 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\u2019t be it \u2014 all but one Scream movie has featured at least two Ghostfaces \u2014 and so the mystery continues.<\/p>\n

Eventually, per tradition, the killers go ahead and reveal themselves: Why, it\u2019s Jessica! You know, Jessica: Sidney\u2019s 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\u2019t 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\u2019s other accomplice. (The third Ghostface, who dies early in the film, is an unstable patient from the facility.)<\/p>\n

\"Sidney
\n Image: Paramount<\/p>\n

Jessica\u2019s stated motivation is her idolization of Sidney, having read her survivor\u2019s 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\u2019s famous past requires her to be conscripted back into strangers\u2019 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\u2019t satirize the idea of a Final Girl unwillingly dragged back to her old role because they want us to feel good about it.<\/p>\n

Where does Scream 8 go from here?<\/p>\n

Every Scream movie feels like it\u2019s supposed to serve as a last word on its subject. It\u2019s not that the films are made without expectation of sequels or mutating horror-movie trends; they\u2019re just designed to consume as much of their own tail as possible. So it\u2019s not surprising that Scream 7 doesn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

Examining its fellow slasher series doesn\u2019t offer many clues. The Nightmare on Elm Street series never got to part eight, unless you count Freddy vs. Jason<\/a>. For the eighth Friday the 13th, Jason took Manhattan<\/a>; Scream has already been there, right down to having most of it played by Canada. The eighth Halloween movie<\/a> might be the most instructive comparison: It, too, followed an installment co-written by Williamson where the series\u2019 signature scream queen returns as a traumatized middle-aged woman. It unceremoniously offered up Laurie Strode in the first 15 minutes.<\/p>\n

\"Laurie
\n Image: Dimension Films<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t 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\u2019s one of Scream\u2019s charms \u2014 or was, until marketing (and screenwriting) tried to sell Campbell\u2019s return as a feel-good story, and Sidney\u2019s return as a serious examination of trauma. I\u2019m 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\u2026 2027?<\/p>\n

After all, if no one has any fun, it doesn\u2019t 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\u2019 zombie era may have already begun.<\/p>\n

Scream 7 is in theaters now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Scream 7 may be the worst-reviewed movie of the series, but the franchise remains safe. It just had…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":454003,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[96,2839,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-454002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=454002"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454002\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/454003"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=454002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=454002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=454002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}