Scream 7 (2026)

Because they fired Melissa Barrera for her anti-genocidal stance (clearly mightily controversial a position to have these days) and Jenna Ortega clearly knew a sinking ship actually captained by the damn rats when she was on one, this episode of the never-ending series of films about yet another killer dressing up like the one from the original Scream who will be revealed without any emotional or dramatic impact returns to the misadventures of the now married (to sheriff Joel McHale) Sidney (Neve Campbell). Because even the guys who directed the atrocious Scream 6 (to be fair, also the wonderful Ready or Not) have some standards, Kevin Williams isn’t just allowed to crap out a script that mostly suggests he hasn’t learned anything about writing in a very long career, but is also allowed to attempt to direct this shit show. And because Williams has heard about H20 and Halloween, there are bits and pieces of Jamie Lee Curtis’s stints as trauma mum in here, when Sidney’s daughter Tatum (Isabel May) – yup, named after the garage door victim - is threatened by yet another version of Ghost Face.

Is it a returning from the dead Matthew Lillard, or is the real killer deep faking with AI? And look, nerds! The unkillable Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox and all of the botox) returns. Not that anyone cares, because Williamson, who was once pretty good at this sort of thing, really can’t or won’t provide a script that bothers to make us care about any of the characters, particularly not the generic fodder that makes up Tatum’s peer group. On the plus side, killed characters in this one at least stay dead (for now).

Look, I can cope with a film made by people who are morally bankrupt – this is Hollywood after all, and I have enjoyed art made by even shittier people and companies – but couldn’t they have at least put their feet down and made something good? Hell, with this one, watchable would have been an improvement over Scream 6 already, but somehow, this entry into the franchise manages to be even worse. This leaves out everything that was good about NuScream – mostly the lead actresses, if we’re being totally honest – and doubles down on everything that’s bad, particularly the increasingly brain-fogged scripts, the non-characters, the way a series that once was proud of superficially criticizing slasher tropes now cannot even seem to attempt to escape those it created itself.

This time around, we are also attacked by weaponized nostalgia, none of which hits, because if anyone wants to see Neve Campbell and Courteney Cox in a Scream movie, they can do that in films that are at the very least well-crafted and not made by people who have left their conscience behind for Paramount’s sweet sweet MAGA money.

In short: Scream (2022)

Two and a half decades after the first serial killing spree from the original Scream and three sequels, yet another film-critically interested serial killer puts on the old Ghostface costume. A new bunch of kids – our lead being one Sam Carpenter (Melissa Barrera) who has a very interesting family history – has to go through the old rigmarole of murder and ironic explanation of horror movie tropes, even those among them who have the good taste to prefer The Babadook. Eventually, good old Dewey (David Arquette), Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox) and Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) will have to return too, for that’s the rule of the franchise.

As somebody who is not madly in love with the original Scream movies (except for part two, which is pretty damn great), I didn’t go into this Scream Requel (a term taken from the ironic explain-y scene, so blame the writers, not me) with too many expectations; though I am a big fan of directing duo Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett’s Ready or Not (aka the better Knives Out).

So I was actually pleasantly surprised at how good the film is at fulfilling all the usual sequel wishes fans have for a franchise while being conscious of but not smug about them. Hell, some of the film’s best scenes are directly mirroring scenes from the original Scream - not so much commenting on them ironically but using the audience’s knowledge of them and the resulting expectations as another method to build suspense. Something the film actually manages to do for most of its running time, until it comes to the great unmasking and a climax with way too many running parts. That the killers are mostly lame clichés of mad people you only meet in the movies with non-motives is by now the franchise standard, of course, and apparently not one the directors and writers James Vanderbilt and Guy Busick were willing to change.

Another weakness is the integration of the classic characters into the movie. They are mostly there for the nostalgia factor, to get in a mid-movie kill so that the audience can feel something, and so they can dispatch a mentally ill young woman in the most brutal way imaginable in the final act.

Which doesn’t ruin the film, mind you, but makes me a little sad that this element of the movie isn’t as thoughtful and genuinely clever as the rest of the film but really aims for the lesser goal of fan service. But what can you do?

Some Thoughts About Scream (1996)

Wes Craven’s Scream is one of those certified horror movie classics beloved by millions - including quite a few writers, friends, and filmmakers whose tastes I tend to trust - I never did get along with too well. Because it is such a classic beloved by many people with good taste, I do tend to try and get into the film every half a decade or so, and what better time for that attempt (again) shortly before the late sequel hits.

With this newest try, my opinion of the film has in so far improved that I don’t actually actively hate it anymore. My heavy dislike, I’ve realized, is not so much for Craven’s film itself, but for the legion of smug, “ironic” teen slashers that followed it – some of them scripted by Scream’s Kevin Williamson, to be sure.

It’s not that I’ve started to love the meta horror elements of the film at hand, mind you: I’m still of the opinion that the script doesn’t really do much more with slasher clichés than to point them out, not fulfilling all of them for sure, but usually not really replacing them with something I find terribly interesting or engaging. or haven’t seen in dozens of giallos done with more style. There’s a sense of smug self-satisfaction running through this arm of horror as a whole I’m never going to become fond of, particularly when this smugness isn’t grounded in as much intelligence as the pose suggests, and never seems to rise above mere cleverness.

In Scream’s specific case, I’m also not at all fond of the final reveal of the killer as a couple of mad people clichés in desperate need of an attic. The film does its very best to make them act as stupidly as possible, so as to make a viewer really work at getting to believe these stupid pricks are criminal masterminds who have managed to fake a couple of murders before (and yes, I know what the later films do about this problem, but there’s no hint on screen that’s something Williamson and Craven were already planning here). Which is not helped by the acting of our villain actors in the final scene, which is so broad as to border on the offensive.

To be fair to the Williamson’s script, the killers’ earlier scenes work excellently when you already know whodunnit, adding a macabre dimension to these interactions on a re-watch, while also playing fair with the audience, something that’s certainly difficult to achieve if you don’t want the genre-savvy viewer to cop to the killers’ identity early on.

The serious – or semi-funny – thriller and murder set pieces still don’t get me as excited as they do my peers and imaginary enemies, alas. It’s not that I find any of them uninteresting, incompetently done or anything else that would make my opinion spectacularly irritating to true fans of the film (and more power to you) – I just don’t find them anything more than slick and competent, following classic suspense models well, but adding little stylistically or thematically that I find particularly involving. But then, I’ve never shared the admiration for Wes Craven as a director, either, so take that for what you will.

But hey, perhaps I’ll change my mind about all of this in the 2030s, when my next attempt at a re-watch is going to be due. Until then, I rather re-watch Scream 2 again, the one film in the franchise I genuinely love.

Three Films Make A Post: Welcome to the Witching Hour

Aval aka Gruham aka The House Next Door (2017): Apparently shot in three of the big Indian languages in parallel, Milind Rau’s tale of ghosts, possession and eventually vengeful reincarnation is a nice example of how world pop cinema can be able to take genre elements from a popular Hollywood genre (in this case The Conjuring style horror) and at first seem to reproduce that pretty closely, only to eventually add highly specific elements from its own cultural frame that change things up considerably. This sort of thing is always at least great fun to me; in Aval’s specific case, that fun is further increased by the director’s genuine ability at creating a proper mood of the contemporary Indian gothic – with a bit of help of some genuinely beautiful locations and often wonderful set design that also finds the point where western horror and Indian horror meet (with a bit of dubious Chinese horror thrown in the mix, too). Plus, possession is always better when no Christian demons are involved.

The Craft (1996): For some, Andrew Fleming’s tale of four high school teen witches getting up to increasingly dark shenanigans, or of four girls trying to survive growing up weird (as portrayed by ridiculously attractive young actresses, of course), is at least a minor classic and an important step in the development of mainstream feminist horror. For others, it’s a camp fest that’s basically made to be incorporated into some crappy talking head TV show about the 90os. As the first, I find the film to be a sometimes frustrating experience, often getting to a point where it looks like it is going to face some shitty thing young women have to go through but then steps back from it at least a half-step again. In the second thing, I simply have no interest, and frankly think a film as genuinely trying to do something interesting while still keeping its contemporary teenage audience entertained deserves better than to be treated as camp.

As a horror movie, I find The Craft a bit harmless but also pleasantly imaginative and graced with the kind of all-out performance by Fairuza Balk as what amounts to its villainess that seems fearless in its total abandon.

Bring Back the Dead (2015): And finally for today, there’s this Singaporean horror movie about a grieving (yet also abusive when her child was still alive, which the rest of the characters comment with sad-eyed tuts) mother (Jesseca Liu) using her former nanny’s (Liu Ling Ling) contacts to a Buddhist priest of dubious morals to conjure the spirit of her dead child into her house. On a theoretical level, that plot is horror gold made for mining an abyss of grief and denial, but even though director Thean-jeen Lee is perfectly decent at the basics of Asian ghost movies, the film’s too glossy and too disinterested in exploring the depths it suggests very deeply.

It’s a fun little spook show, mind you, just one that wastes an excellent set-up on being only that.