This, on the other hand, is just more of the same, and not even more of the recent same; when you can't come up with a decent angle for the increasingly pointless meta-speech about how the current wave of killings relates back to the limitless world of horror movie sequels, it's probably time to call it quits.
After an opening that serves largely to remind audiences that the opening sequences are usually the best part of a Scream movie (as director, Kevin Williamson does show some chops when it comes to staging the stalk-and-slash sequences), we get to the plot.
Only kidding, there isn't one: after a bunch of scenes designed to establish that Sidney (Neve Campbell) is not over her trauma but also that she let everyone down by not letting her trauma force her to show up in the previous Scream film - and that she has an all new teenage daughter Tatum (Isabel May), who comes with a group of murderable friends - the latest Ghostface starts killing.
Aside from all the plot baggage, the Scream movies have a few other consistent elements. For one, Ghostface is not superhumanly invulnerable; they almost always get knocked down and smacked around before a kill, so much so that it's now common knowledge that a fight isn't over until you shoot whoever's wearing the Ghostface mask in the head.
The other is that the identity of Ghostface is a mystery: the Scream movies are whodunnits. This is a real problem when you get to the seventh film in a series, because there is a very clear hierarchy in place.
Legacy characters who have survived one or more Ghostface attacks (that's be Courtney Cox's pushy journo Gale Weathers, back for what is basically an extended cameo) are pretty much in the clear; boring newcomers who nobody cares about are the ones to watch out for. Which makes the "mystery" something to be waited out rather than engaged in: it's not going to be anyone interesting, so let's just run the clock down.
Scream 7 does try something slightly interesting with all this, as presumed dead former Ghostface Stu Macher (Matthew Lillard) makes video calls to Sidney ranting about how he's back from the grave to kill her for what she did to him. Everyone pretty much immediately says "wow, deep fakes are pretty good these days", though there's a bit of real world evidence to muddy the waters. But at least having Lillard back does give some small dramatic heft to the otherwise pointless mystery.
Having burnt through and burnt off the previous film's reboot energy, this is really just going through the motions. Nothing new or original's being said, none of the new characters are fun or interesting and the returning ones are a pale shadow of their former selves. Campbell seems like the only one really committing to it all - as well she should, as this is basically a showcase for her character - but beyond "hey, I'm not dead", there's not much left for Sidney to say either.
The big appeal of the first Scream was that it mixed in a whole bunch of comedy and commentary on top of a decent slasher film. The decent slasher film part is pretty much all that's left; every scene where someone doesn't die feels like it's slowing things down.
- Anthony Morris
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