Scream 7 was a shitshow. Many people say the production was cursed from the time they fired Melissa Barrera in retaliation for speaking against the conflict in Gaza. Some people credit the movie’s disgraceful entry to Kevin Williamson’s director role, despite it never being his strength. Having last directed a movie in 2005, Williamson has spoken out on how much he hated directing and preferred being in the writer’s chair. After Christopher Landon left the project calling it a “dream job that turned into a nightmare.”
Whether you consider the film to be cursed or just your run-of-the-mill cash grab, I think it’s safe to say we all collectively didn’t like it. What didn’t fans like about Scream 7? Well, there’s plenty of that to discuss, and we will.
First, we’ll run through the movie’s plot. Then we’ll get into the positives of Scream 7, since there are actually a handful. After that, we’ll rip apart all the plot holes, writing red flags, and inadequate character moments.
The Plot
The movie started with a couple visiting the Stu Macher house, which has since become an interactive true-crime Airbnb following Amber’s crispy ending in Scream 5. The isolated opening isn’t bad. The characters are entertaining to watch as they hold opposing views on the idea of sensationalizing true crime, and that’s what the Scream movies are about. Examining the tropes of the times and bringing that conversation to the forefront through meta commentary. Unfortunately, any commentary worth mentioning burned down with the Macher house after two great, but ultimately unrelated kills.
Then we get a scene copied and pasted from Scream 1996, with Sidney’s daughter taking her place as the teenage girl with a boyfriend climbing through her window, making very strange horror-movie comparisons to their relationship. I think this scene was done way better in Scream 4 with Jill and Trevor. Here, they literally used the same dialogue; it was so cheesy. Rather than Billy’s line about the exorcist making him think of Sidney, Tatums boyfriend says he was inspired to visit after watching Stab. To clarify, this young man just told his girlfriend, I was watching your mom be tormented by her boyfriend, and it made me horny enough to come trek over here. Let’s hunch.
We’re only at the second scene, and the quality is already leaking. Sidney clocks the boyfriend schnenegans almost immediately and makes him leave. I interpreted Sidney’s interruption as evidence of security cameras and motion sensors, which obviously makes a lot of sense considering Sidney’s past. Keep all this in mind, because we will circle back to this point a bit later.
Sidney and her daughter Tatum go back and forth a bit. Tatum calls her mother a hypocrite, considering she had boys sneaking into her room at that age. It’s very normal mother-daughter fighting until Tatum asks her mother about the Stab movies and how accurate they really are. Sidney refuses to talk about it, and we get a brief scene of her interacting with her husband, Mark, the local sheriff.
We get a scene introducing Tatum’s friends in a very Halloween-esque manner. There are Hannah (played by McKenna Grace) and Chloe (played by Celeste O’Connor). They just felt like generic canon fodder with nothing notable, except the party Hannah planned on throwing that night.
We also get introduced to Sidney’s friend, Jessica (played by Anna Camp), who frequents her coffee shop, and her son, Lucas (played by Asa Germann). Lucas is like a creepier version of Randy, asking Sidney if he can interview her for his true-crime podcast, and you’ll definitely want to check off his name on your suspect list.
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