'Scream 7' Review: A Franchise Running on Empty

⭐ Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

Scream 7

Directed by Kevin Williamson

Written by Kevin Williamson

Starring Neve Campbell, Courtney Cox, Isabel May

Release Date February 27th, 2026

The Scream Franchise Has Become Its Own Parody

It’s not that Scream 7 is bad. It’s that I just can’t be bothered to give a damn

The Scream franchise passed into a parody of itself years ago. By the 15th or 16th person to put on the rubber mask and black cloak, I could no longer muster any emotional reaction toward the series.

The last time I truly cared about the franchise was in 2011, when Hayden Panettiere stole Scream 4 as Kirby — the best Scream character not named Gale or Sidney. Sure, Kirby returned in Scream 6, but even her vast appeal couldn’t keep the franchise from sinking under the weight of its own vacuous emptiness.

Moving the Horror from Woodsboro to Pine Grove

Scream 7 removes the action from Woodsboro, California in favor of the fictional town of Pine Grove, Indiana.

This is where the former Sidney Prescott — now Sidney Evans (Neve Campbell) — lives with her husband Mark (Joel McHale) and their children, including their oldest daughter, Tatum (Isabel May).

Mother and daughter are already in conflict when the story begins.

Tatum is curious about the trauma that has defined her mother’s life, pushing for answers that Sidney refuses to give. Sidney believes she can protect her daughter from the past by keeping it hidden.

But the past rarely stays buried — especially when you are the ultimate horror “Final Girl.”

The Stu Macher Mystery

Back in Woodsboro, a masked killer slaughters a pair of true-crime fans and burns down the former home of killer Stu Macher (Matthew Lillard).

Soon after, Sidney begins receiving phone calls again.

Voice changer. Threatening tone. The usual.

Then things take a turn: a FaceTime call arrives, and on the other end is the face of the supposedly dead Stu Macher.

Is Stu somehow still alive? Or is this some elaborate AI prank designed to rattle Sidney?

The answer isn’t particularly taxing to figure out. The movie isn’t especially clever about revealing the truth, and everything leading up to it is the kind of dimwitted recycling that has become the norm for this struggling franchise.

Familiar Survivors Return

Eventually, people in Pine Grove begin to die, and Sidney’s old friend Gale (Courteney Cox) shows up ready to join the fight, as always.

Gale is joined by two members of the surviving New York Scream team, twins Chad and Mindy (Mason Gooding and Jasmin Savoy Brown).

Chad is the pincushion from Scream 6 who somehow survived a comical number of stab wounds — largely because Mason Gooding tests well with audiences.

Characters like Chad are exactly why I find it impossible to care about the Scream franchise anymore.

I know asking for verisimilitude in a horror franchise is like asking for a gourmet meal at a fast-food restaurant. But I can’t help expecting more from Scream.

The first two films are genuine classics, and Scream 4 proved there was still life in the meta-textual horror formula.

But eventually the Ghostface mask became a kind of magical shield against injuries, logic, and even gravity. If Chad is a pincushion, anyone wearing the mask becomes a comic-book character with the healing factor of Wolverine and the strength of the Hulk — even when they’re supposed to be a five-foot-tall teenager.

Kevin Williamson Runs Through the Greatest Hits

Scream 7 simply runs through the beats and tropes with no innovation and barely a deviation from expectations.

Only one scene — a quiet conversation between Gale and Sidney in which Sidney affirms her trust in her longtime friend — reaches anything close to emotional involvement.

Everything else feels like a vaguely competent run through a greatest-hits set.

The New Characters Make No Impression

The new cast is perhaps the clearest example of what’s wrong with this aging franchise.

None of the new characters introduced in Scream 7 leave any real impression. A pair of teenage boys clearly meant to evoke the Billy and Stu dynamic from the original barely register as characters at all.

Director-screenwriter Kevin Williamson does them no favors by giving them almost no development beyond red-herring archetypes.

Isabel May as Sidney’s Daughter

The most significant addition to the cast is Sidney’s daughter, Tatum.

Isabel May is… fine.

She’s not bad. She’s not great. She’s fine.

She does the job of budding scream queen about as well as she can under such bland direction. She nails her one big moment, reacting as her mother finally explains where the name Tatum came from and shares memories of Rose McGowan’s beloved character from the original Scream.

A Franchise Haunted by Its Own Past

Moments like that — moments when the film reckons with its own history — are among the strongest in Scream 7.

But they also highlight the central problem.

Recalling the greatness of Scream and Scream 2 only emphasizes how empty this latest entry feels. The franchise ran out of ideas long before Billy Loomis returned as a kind of ghostly hallucination trying to convince his daughter to go evil.

Yes, that happened.

You may have forgotten Billy Loomis’ return because it wasn’t interesting enough to be remembered. I only remember it because I wrote about how silly it was in my review of whichever late-period Scream installment it happened in.

At this point they’ve all blurred together — aside from the original film and the arrival of Kirby.

Final Thoughts

There was a time when Scream reinvented the slasher movie.

Now it just imitates itself.

Scream 7 isn’t incompetent. It’s professionally made, occasionally amusing, and stocked with familiar faces.

But the franchise has run out of ideas, and Kevin Williamson’s return — once an exciting prospect — ultimately feels like one more spin through a formula that stopped being clever a long time ago.

Tags:

Scream 7, Scream franchise, Neve Campbell, Kevin Williamson, Ghostface, horror movie review, 2026 movies, slasher movies, Courteney Cox, Scream series