★ (1 out of 4)
Is the Ghostface mask made of plastic? I don’t know, but “Scream 7” sure is. For all the R-rated blood splatter, the scares are crushingly synthetic in yet another failed attempt to revive a franchise that’s been on life support for decades.
You can practically hear unlucky No. 7 begging to be put out of its misery. Look for it to top the box office this weekend before disappointment stabs you in the heart. Yet ticket buyers, me included, keep coming back hoping for a miracle like the first two, so fresh with inside comic references that they seemed to have the dew still on them. How does it happen that a series once so merrily, maliciously meta is now just ploddingly meh?
Listen my children and you shall hear. It starts with the last film, “Scream VI,” which starred Jenna Ortega and Melissa Barrera, who was fired from joining “Scream 7” after posting pro-Palestine comments on social media; the studio canned her on the spot citing “zero tolerance for antisemitism.” Ortega, claiming schedule conflicts, soon decamped herself, along with the director, who received death threats after Barrera’s firing.
The way I see it, “Scream 7” was reconfigured as a safe place. The studio brought back original star Neve Campbell, who declined to return to her OG role as perpetual Ghostface target Sidney Prescott in “Scream 6” over a salary dispute she labeled sexist. Kevin Williamson, the gifted screenwriter who created the “Scream” franchise,” was recruited for “Scream 7” to make his debut as a director. Peacemaker is more like it.
Don’t make waves is the last direction I’d expect from a “Scream” movie. But “Scream 7,” despite a few gory kills, achieves unapologetically formulaic levels of flat and uninspired. Williamson, the original meta man, acts like he’s directing traffic, making sure everyone hits their marks. The only thing new is the nowhere location in Pine Grove, Indiana, where Sidney and her cop husband (Joel McHale, wasted) raise their teenage daughter, Tatum (Isabel May, bland), away from the daily slashings in Woodsboro. Ah, tranquility.
Good luck with that. The neighbors, presumably drawn from a casting call for generic, include a pushy neighbor (Anna Camp), her creepy son (Asa Germann), a boyfriend for Tatum (Sam Rechner), and Tatum besties (McKenna Grace, Celeste O’Connor). A threatening call from Ghostface comes just in time to pick up the pace and send in TV reporter Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox, back with nothing to do) to dig through the usual suspects.
Its disposable, defanged thrills seem like ChatGPT prompts fed the wrong info about what constitutes scary.
Hey, wait, didn’t the “Scream 7” trailer suggest that we’d see dead people, like Stu Macher (Matthew Lillard), Nancy Loomis (Laurie Metcalf), Roman Bridger (Scott Foley), and sheriff Dewey (David Arquette)? If you’re confused, I’d blame AI. Everyone else does. Deepfake is practically the only reason “Scream 7” has for being.
It all ends back home with Sidney and Tatum taking on Ghostface who seems to multiply with every scene. I dare you to give a damn. When the mask(s) is/are uncovered, you won’t remember where you the saw the culprit(s) before. In a single opening scene in the first “Scream,” directed by horrormeister Wes Craven 30 years ago, Drew Barrymore made you live and breathe with the terrified babysitter she was playing. Here it’s hard to muster even a sniffle for victims who seem to come from central casting.
So, yeah, “Scream 7” definitely wins the booby prize for the worst “Scream” so far. Its disposable, defanged thrills seem like ChatGPT prompts fed the wrong info about what constitutes scary. The only way you can prevent a “Scream 8” rising from the ashes of “Scream 7” is to put a stake in its vampire heart. Or don’t pay to see it. That works every time.