JONESING FOR FILMS

I fondly remember going to see the original Scream back in 1996 with a group of friends in high school. The meta nature of the movie felt fresh and it started a mini-boom of knockoffs, a freshness that quickly wore off with each successive sequel. When they revived the franchise with the fifth installment in 2022, it was probably as much an attempt to revitalize movie theaters with familiar content post-Covid as it was to refresh the franchise.

In these new releases, they somehow managed to alienate both its original star, Neve Campbell, and then feel compelled to move on from their would-be current star, Melissa Barrera, because the studio did not agree with her statements on Israel and Palestine, which sent it scurrying back to Campbell for this, the seventh installment in the franchise, Scream 7.

Campbell’s Sidney Prescott, now a mother of a teenager daughter who is the same age as she was during the events of the first movie. She keeps her daughter (Isabel May), who she named after her deceased best friend, Tatum, at arm’s length when it comes to the details of her past, with her daughter only knowing what is public knowledge. That all changes when a new Ghostface killer appears and starts threatening Sidney and her daughter. Most quizzically, the killer is claiming through video calls to be Stu Macher (Matthew Lillard), one of the original Woodsboro killers.

There are some creative deaths in the movie. Even the opening scene which takes places in Stu Macher’s old home that has been turned into an Airbnb tricked out wit Stab memorabilia has some creativity to it, with a motion sensing Ghostface killer in one room. Perhaps the best death is reserved for a young actress on a high school stage, which I will not spoil further, but it is very much teased before it happens.

The mother-daughter relationship between Sidney and Tatum is mostly a positive aspect of the film. Initially, I thought it was lazy and cheesy to have Sidney name her daughter after her high school best friend, but there is a scene when she is asked about it by someone and the explanation was actually quite touching, and hit home in a way I didn’t expect, mainly because the intention behind the name was in contrast to how their actual relationship is, which is a heightened case of the typically contentious mother-teen daughter relationship.

 Aside from a few creative kills and more than just a passing nod to Tatum’s story paralleling Sidney’s in the original, this is easily the laziest and uninspired chapter in the franchise. I get that there was a lot of behind-the-scenes turmoil, given the loss of Melissa Barrera and Jenna Ortega, the co-directors of the last two films moving on, the mending of fences with Campbell, and a writer’s strike thrown in for good measure, but this movie is a narrative mess.

There have been a few attempts to integrate AI and new technology into movies as plot devices, and, without getting into spoiler territory, this is among the most ham-fisted I have seen at incorporating deepfakes and AI.

What was fresh about the original movie was its self-awareness, embodied by Jamie Kennedy’s Randy knowing the “rules” of scary movies. That meta commentary and self-awareness has devolved into characters openly and regularly speculating about who the killers are based on genre tropes (always suspect the boyfriend). But everything is just a misdirect to try to keep the audience guessing on the killer or killers. And the movie arguably psychs itself out with the killer reveal and the narrative knots it ties itself into.

Also, the film takes places in the fictional small town of Pine Grove, Indiana, which is quite far from Woodsboro, CA which is where the original movie takes place, and where Stu Macher’s home is, which features prominently in the opening scene. Also, with the “Is Stu Macher alive” subplot, there is an institution involved and its location is never revealed, even though Sidney and Gale (Courtney Cox) take a daytrip there looking for answers. Why would an amnesiac Stu Macher end up in an institution in Indiana?

For every creative way of killing off a character, there are some egregiously dumb ones that feel like self-parody, none more so than one that takes place in a bar, which was groan-inducing. Throw in a handful of references to previous installments in the franchise and you’ve got the warmed over serving that is the seventh entry in this franchise.

I think it is more than fair to say that none of the sequels ever truly came close to recapturing the magic that made the original Scream so special and such a hit when it came out. That magic is long gone and there’s barely a flicker of it to be seen in Scream 7. It is clear in the reveal of the Ghostface killer(s) in this movie that they are out of good creative ideas of why there is another person trying to kill Sidney Prescott. I’d tell them to leave the woman alone, but I highly doubt that will happen.

There will no doubt be an eighth installment in the franchise. I have been there for every one of them up to this point. I think I am ready to tap out now. Like Sidney repeatedly tells Tatum, you need to shoot the killer in the head to make sure they’re really dead. This franchise needs the proverbial bullet in the head now.

Rating: 1 out of 5 stars