Neve Campbell Returns, to No Avail

There’s plenty of suspense in the seventh installment of the venerable Scream horror movie franchise. Unfortunately, most of it involves the backstory and corporate intrigue. Did Melissa Barrera deserve to be fired? What was the real reason Jenna Ortega departed? What kind of hardball did Neve Campbell play to be enticed back to the series? Will series creator Kevin Williamson do a good job directing one of the films for the first time? Which veteran franchise performers, representing characters both living and dead, return for cameos? And most importantly, why did the title switch back to an Arabic numeral after they used a Roman one the last time?

Sorry, but you need to have something to think about during this latest edition of a franchise that is dead creatively if certainly not commercially. You can rest assured that Ghostface, sporting that perennially creepy mask and dependably voiced by Roger L. Jackson, will slash his way through most of the cast, whose survival will depend on contract negotiations. There will be fake-out scares, followed by real ones, and plenty of self-referential discussions in which the characters comment ironically on their situation. “It’s always someone you know,” one observes about the real identity of the killer behind the mask. “This was too easy,” another comments after Ghostface is seemingly dispatched at one point. “There’s always more than one.”  

By now the mechanics of the series have become so numbingly familiar that the films have the stale feel of Pink Floyd cover bands. The big news about Scream 7, of course, is the return of Campbell as Sidney Prescott, who was sorely missed in the last one. Not surprisingly, screenwriters Williamson and Guy Busick make sure to let us know we’re in on the joke when Courteney Cox’s intrepid television reporter Gale Weathers, who was seriously injured in Scream VI (but of course survived), tells Sidney, “You were missed in New York, it’s not the same without you,” adding, “You’re lucky you sat that one out. It was brutal.” And Sidney is naturally described as a “scream queen,” on par with Jamie Lee Curtis of the Halloween films. 

Sidney has made a new life for herself in another town: She’s now happily married to local cop Mark (Joel McHale) and has a teenage daughter, Tatum (Isabel May), named after Sidney’s friend, who met an untimely end in Scream. Tatum’s boyfriend (Sam Rechner) has just the sort of devilish looks to make him a suspect when Ghostface returns to wreak havoc. Not that Ghostface seems to be shy about revealing his identity, since Sidney receives a series of taunting, threatening videos from Stu (Matthew Lillard), Ghostface’s accomplice in the first film, who supposedly died.

Or did he? Hard to tell, since the series is so fond of resurrecting former characters despite their deceased status that you practically need a spreadsheet to keep track of them all. You can rest assured that there are many more of them on display in this installment, with only Paramount’s threats of sending Ghostface to my home preventing me from revealing them. But it’s hopefully not too much of a spoiler to say that the series has kept up with modern technology, AI proving a key element in this go-around.

Other new characters who may or may not survive include Sidney’s solicitous neighbor Jessica (Anna Camp); her son Lucas (Asa Germann), who’s obsessed with the previous Ghostface murders; Tatum’s perky friend Hannah (Mckenna Grace); and mental institution employee Marco (Ethan Embry), who provides useful information about some of the former inhabitants. Feel free to place your bets as to which of them, or whomever else, is the person, or persons, behind the mask, but you can rest assured it’s a letdown.

The overfamiliarity would be more palatable if the dialogue were as fresh and funny as it was in the early installments, or if the kills were more creatively staged. But there’s a rote quality to the proceedings that makes Scream 7 feel like a slog despite its high body count and copious gore. The supporting players, particularly the younger ones, lack the flair of their predecessors, with Campbell and Cox picking up the slack to fine but unsurprising effect. Although it must be said that the latter gets to make one hell of an entrance.