‘Scream 7’ review: Kevin Williamson makes Ghostface fun again

The Scream franchise just got fun again, thanks to Scream 7. 

When it comes to churning out sequels, the horror series has a higher bar to clear than its sisters in slasher. It’s not enough to make a movie that’s scary and funny, with a big reveal-the-killers moment at the end. They also have to be smart, speaking to fans who not only made 1996’s Scream a genre-shifting success but also fans who’ve grown up on these movies and demand they keep up with the genre critique across 30 years of evolution.

Where Scream introduced “the rules” of the slasher as a means to break them, its sequels built a box that became increasingly constrained by lore and meta commentary. This pushed the film series farther away from Woodsboro — to college (Scream 2), to Los Angeles (Scream 3), to New York (Scream VI), getting to a point where Final Girl Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) was no longer the hero, but either a supporting character (Scream 4 and 5 — which was confusingly titled Scream) or absent altogether (Scream VI).

Scream 7 brings Campbell back to the center of the story, restoring some of the original concept’s simplicity. But you can never go home again, and Scream 7 recognizes that with a fiery opening, as teased in the trailers.

Kevin Williamson is back, and back in Woodsboro. 

Williamson earned his first screenplay credit in 1996 for Scream, swiftly defining a brand of horror where teens weren’t stupid victims, but snarky, smart, and still susceptible to homicide. He’d go on to pen Scream 2 and 4. For Scream 7, he teamed up on the screenplay with James Vanderbilt and Guy Busick, who penned 5 and VI. And Williamson also takes the helm of this one. Out the gate, you can feel Williamson’s influence in the cracking dialogue between a quarreling couple at a taboo Airbnb.

Scott (Jimmy Tatro) is a devoted “Stab head,” meaning a fan of the films-within-the films that turned the “true” story of the Woodsboro murders into a profitable slasher franchise. His girlfriend Madison (Michelle Randolph) knows her horror movies, but is less charmed by Scott’s idea for a fun getaway: staying at Stu Macher’s house. Now an “experience destination,” the iconic home of one of the Woodsboro murderers has been decked out with memorabilia from the Stab movies and crime scene details, including outlines of where the killers fell dead and plaques about who got killed where.

From this moment, Scream 7 doesn’t just wink at the long-time Scream fans, who are greedily eying every frame for Easter eggs. It waves at us with a fervent reminder that knowing about these movies doesn’t mean you’d survive them. (RIP Randy, the first to teach us this lesson.) 

However, the Macher house murders at the start of 7 aren’t simply fan-service. They are also a declaration: don’t get stuck in the past.

Scott’s fatal mistake was chasing nostalgia. But beyond that, Williamson’s first kills here are more vicious than those in Scream. They’re more on par with the graphic violence seen in the torture porn trend that would follow the release of Scream 3 — a trend that is part of the reason this franchise went fallow for 11 years.

And it’s not just the level of gore in this opening sequence, which echoes the malicious and prolonged assault on Jenna Ortega at the start of Scream 5. It’s that Madison, with her pink hoodie and long blonde hair, may not look like a stereotypical horror fan, but she knows her stuff — and she’s a fighter. Watching her subvert the expectations of a “dumb blonde” and still wind up very dead sets the standard for Scream 7. Williamson keeps the tension and creepy quality high to the very final frame.

Scream 7 recaptures the thrills of the first film without being precious about them. 

McKenna Grace, Celeste O’Connor and Isabel May star in Paramount Pictures and Spyglass Media Group’s “Scream 7.”
Credit: Paramount Pictures

Filling in the blanks of Sidney’s personal life, Scream 7 picks up in Pine Grove, a cozy small town where Sidney is married to police chief Mark Evans (Joel McHale) and raising three children including her 17-year-old daughter Tatum (Isabel May), named for her childhood best friend. Nowadays, Mrs. Evans — as she prefers to be called — runs a cute coffee shop and argues with her eldest about why it’s not smart to let your horny boyfriend crawl through your window at night. (“Hypocrite!” a seething Tatum hurls in response.) However, these very common mother-daughter conflicts are deprioritized when Sidney gets a call from a familiar voice that threatens her kid. 

Will history repeat itself? Not only is Sidney once more facing off against a serial killer in a Ghostface mask, but also it’s a slasher that wants to kill her Tatum all over again. However, from the first act, Scream 7 does something none of the previous entries have done before: it shows who’s on the other end of the menacing call. 

If you’ve followed casting news or paid attention in the trailers, you know Matthew Lillard, who played Stu Macher in Scream, is back for Scream 7. It’s what some fans (this one included) have been waiting for — especially after Skeet Ulrich started popping up as a delusion/ghost dad Billy Loomis in 5-VI.

In a video call, Lillard’s manic energy explodes in threats and taunts, all the more menacing because of the gnarly scars on his face. Naturally, Sidney is shocked. By all accounts, Stu died by a TV to the head in 1996. Everyone tells Sidney it can’t be him. It must be AI or a deepfake, suggests the hard-to-kill franchise mainstay Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox). However, her self-described “hot interns,” resilient twins Mindy (Jasmin Savoy Brown) and Chad Meeks-Martin (Mason Gooding), point out that crazier things have happened in this franchise.

Cleverly, Williamson and his co-writers have weaponized the Stu lives fan-theory to be a mystery within the mystery. It’s not enough to unmask the killer. This Stu business needs to be settled. And along the way to a climax that is surprising and astounding in its violence, fans of Lillard will have plenty of opportunity to thrill over his return. His rambunctious energy and explosive charisma hasn’t faded in thirty years, and it’s wild fun to see him pissing Sidney off all over again.

Scream 7 offers Easter Eggs and a wise revision of form. 

Mason Gooding, left, and Jasmin Savoy Brown star in Paramount Pictures and Spyglass Media Group’s “Scream 7.”
Credit: Paramount Pictures

Scream lovers will notice the reprisal of songs like Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ “Red Right Hand” and a slow, sexy cover of Blue Öyster Cult’s “Don’t Fear the Reaper,” the latter playing over the teen heroine kissing her boyfriend (like mother like daughter). There’s also a cheeky nod to Scream 2, thanks to a framed photo of Tori Spelling, who canonically played Sidney in the first Stab movie. And content creators who love horror will relish doing shot-by-shot comparisons, as Williamson wisely apes director Wes Craven’s iconic cinematography from the first Scream. Then, this sequel makes terrific departures from the franchise’s weakest points. 

For one thing, there’s the Tatum of it all. This franchise demands Sidney subtly mourn her losses, because to wallow in them would ruin the cat-and-mouse fun, right? In Scream, Sidney was given space to express the pain of losing her mother in a scene with Billy, recreated in Scream 2 and then mocked in Scary Movie.

By Scream 3, she wears her pain in the form of a necklace that her slain Scream 2 boyfriend (Jerry O’Connell) gave her. But as the movies go on, Sidney needs to be tough, not sad, lest the fun be lost amid the grief. Here, at last, the Scream franchise gives her the space to talk about her trauma outside of platitudes. Through striving to rescue Tatum, Sidney is processing the loss of her friend, and coming to understand how she can share this horrific part of her life with her daughter in a healing way. 

Death is not taken lightly in Scream 7, even as the kills get outrageous. By the time the franchise got to Scream 3, it began giving into an ugly slasher cliche: making most of the victims unlikable before they die. Presumably, this is so the audience can enjoy the violent spectacle, rather than being saddened as the body count grows. In Scream 3, this series turned abruptly misogynistic, featuring a blonde actress (Jenny McCarthy) who is depicted as “nagging” before being slaughtered, then a sweet ingénue (Emily Mortimer) who, before being killed, is slutshamed for sleeping with a producer to get the role of Sidney in Stab 3. (See also Alison Brie’s wickedly opportunistic PR agent in Scream 4.)

Courteney Cox, left, and Neve Campbell star in Paramount Pictures and Spyglass Media Group’s “Scream 7.”
Credit: Paramount Pictures

In Scream 7, Williamson and his co-writers offer a collection of kids who are spirited, funny, quirky, and creepy. They are distinctive and not casually disposed of, but are brutally killed. This reflects the first film, which didn’t take itself that seriously. As the franchise switched hands to directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett with Scream 5 and 6, the new heroine’s (Melissa Barrera) brooding over being the offspring of Billy Loomis dragged the franchise into a suffocatingly grim terrain.

In this way, Scream 7 is a return to form. Between the comic relief of the Meeks-Martin twins, Lillard’s irrepressible energy, and the kinetic crew of new teens (including McKenna Grace, Asa Germann, Celeste O’Connor, and Sam Rechner), there’s a levity that makes this movie wildly and unapologetically fun. This frivolity contrasts all the more sharply with the intense kill scenes, making their stabs hit home all the harder. Then, the close-ups on spilled entrails and destroyed faces doesn’t let us escape the impact. Each loss is sensationally scary, building tension and anticipation for vigilante justice, Final Girl style. (Go get ’em, Sid!) 

Simply put, I was elated with Scream 7. Williamson smartly surveyed the whole of the franchise, working in lore — and even fan theories — where appropriate. But his film doesn’t feel weighed down by them. He has delivered wild kills, a meta monologue about horror conventions, and enough comic relief to make this sequel a devilish roller coaster ride — the kind that sparks the audience to gasp, scream, cackle, and even yell to the characters onscreen as if we can help them.

As someone who has long counted Scream as the best of the batch, I yearned for a sequel that recaptured that feeling of discovery but also shared in my affection for the first film. Scream 7 does that, paying homage without being beholden to audience expectation or constrictive lore. Incredibly, Williams gives us a hearty dose of nostalgia and Easter eggs while providing new ideas, weird reveals, and fresh chills.

In the end, Scream 7 may not be the best of the bunch, but it’s damn close. 

Scream 7 opens only in theaters on Feb. 27.