Scream 7 is trash

Stu, you know, this guy.

★★--Oof. This film was all-nonsense. Kevin Williamson really fell off. Here are some of the things that really stuck out as stupid from this movie… 

 

The panic room that makes no sense, they leave, and you can access through the wall. Why even have a panic room? Also, why don’t you have more guns? And why can’t you shoot for shit? Also, Joel McHale, Sidney’s husband, is the town’s sherriff, you’d think maybe he’d have the cops he works with protect his family since Ghostface is actively trying to kill them. And it has long been heavily implied that Sidney’s husband was Detective Mark Kincaid from the third movie. In maybe Scream 4 we are told that he is named Mark, but now it’s this other Mark. I guess that name isn’t off the table for ole Sid, which sort of implies that they never had a serious thing going on. Ok. 

 

Ger.

Speaking of dumb retcons, spoilers below, Matthew Lillard is back as Stu Macher, sort of. He is pretty funny and obviously having a good time. Is that a positive though? Overall, the characters in this film are bad and include all the stereotypes except athlete. Have the boyfriend. The weird boy They are played by Asa Germann and Sam Rechner and are interchangeable. The black BFF. The gay guy. The theater chick, who was the only one of them I recognized. Played Mckenna Grace from the post-covid Ghostbuster films and who was just in that Regretting You movie. And the survivor girl. They all barely have names.  

Woman that plays Sid’s daughter, Isabel May, at least looks super cute. She does look 30 though. Is 25. Her face is kind of an amalgamation of Juliet Lewis, that Linda Cardellini woman from ER and Freaks and Geeks, Alison Lohman from the aughts, Maria Bello, and some Jennifer Lawrence. 

 

Gail is still a bitch. Though now she’s traumatized. You feel sorry for her. Courteney Cox looks pretty good compared to the other last few movies. She’s crazy as fuck though and she moves like an old lady. Neve Campbell is back as Sidney nee Prescott. Everything about her character and performance were lame. And Jimmy Tatro who I still think of as the alleged dick-drawer in American Vandal is there as the dumb guy half of the standard opening kill. 

 

Camp, who seems like a real C U Next Tuesdee, talked a bunch of shit on social, saying “The boycott didn’t work. The critics hate didn’t work. The pathetic leaks didn’t work. What worked was audiences coming out and making the film a success.” I’d wait to see how long you stay in that top spot before doing a victory lap, but that’s just me though. 

 

Which brings me to the two main legacy characters from 5 and 6 that aren’t there and are never mentioned, which is super weird, while Randy’s niece, played by Jasmin Savoy Brown, and nephew, Mason Gooding, are there for reasons that make no sense. Mason is Cuba Gooding Jr.‘s kid. Jesus, he is extremely handsome, even by nepo-baby standards. He is a legit future STAR, in my opinion. I’ve been holding onto his stock since Scream 5… But it hasn’t paid out quite as much as I would have expected at this point. Maybe Heart Eyes and this will change that. Two franchises ain’t bad. Also, Hollywood isn’t forcing him on us like Austin Butler. He seems to be coming up surprisingly organically. 

Ger.

Anyway, so I guess Gooding and Brown will carry the franchise on going forward since they conveniently survived. That Melissa Barrera girl got fired because she told the truth about Israel engaging in state sanctioned terrorism. This resulted in the previously mentioned boycotts. Yeah, fuck that Camp lady. I guess Jenna Ortega is too big.

Some more shit is that when the first sort of red herring Ghostface guy gets dispatched in record time, they sure do take their time on masking the guy. When they finally do, you can see why. It was just some crazy guy.

 

They introduce AI into the plot, like someone has made an app or whatever where users can change into legacy characters. Just cheesy as shit. I briefly suspected it was Joel using the program because of their similar heights and looks and weight and what not. Not long after Stu shows back up, we get a story from a crazy guy working at the local mental hospital. I recognized him from all kinds of things from the 90s, including Dutch and Can’t Hardly Wait. He tells Sidney that Stu is alive and has amnesia. Yeah, things t’s getting crazy. But, you know, recognize that guy. So obviously he’s the killer. Or one of them. At one point, in regard to Stu possibly being alive, Randy’s niece starts talking about the rules. “Ridiculous retcon by any franchise standards,”she says. Her brother then says something like “we’re not doing the rules anymore.”

 

Lastly, the killer has unexplained super strength. Ghostface lifts some guy by the head, puts his head through a pointy tap, and then beers starts coming out of his mouth. I guess that was cool.

There is one good thing, a 15-minute stretch that is as tense as anything in the franchise. Things got a little rowdy in my theater on opening night during that run. But it didn’t last, and afterwards I heard everyone universally talking shit, even people that didn’t look like cinephiles, if you know what I mean. 

Immediately upon leaving the movie, I had it second to last. VI I had lower. But after writing about this a little bit, I now think this seventh film is the nadir. My ranking is Scream, 4, 2, the fifth one just titled Scream (2022), 3, VI, and 7. The original is a five-star movie. 4 and 2, four stars. 5 three stars. 3, VI, and 7, two stars. If it weren’t for that tense 15 minutes, this would be a one-star movie. On a related note, I’m done with this franchise. Unless the next one has insane buzz, I’m not falling for this again.

Scream is the greatest movie of all time

Scream. Total game changing horror movie. When this came out I lost my mind. I was in eighth grade and I remember everyone sort of placing themselves in the various roles and where they fit in and stuff. I was an obvious Matthew Lillard although I have probably grown into more of a Randy. So yeah, not only did it start a horror renaissance but every high school movie ever rode it's coattails and was made from 1996-2001. Catapulted Courtney Cox into super stardom for a little bit. Established Wes Craven as a genius and gave us two of my favorite scenes of all time. Greatest movie of all time.

Rotten Tomato Consensus: Horror icon Wes Craven's subversive deconstruction of the genre is sly, witty, and surprisingly effective as a slasher film itself, even if it's a little too cheeky for some.

One of the great THO scenes of all time

Pros: The opening is one of the greats of all time. Ditto on the rules scene. One of the greatest meta films ever which really popularized the literary device in cinema (especially with horror). Matthew Lillard (Stuart) really goes for it. Most of the performances are just over-the-top enough to make the film awesome instead of annoying. Lots of pretty ladies. Rose McGowan has never been cuter, a very cute girl, than at that moment.

Cons: Some of the plot is a little ludicrous. Like, I don't think the whole Billy Loomis/Stuart game plan at the end to get away with murder, spoiler, is going to hold up once the crime lab shows up and sees they are covered in corn syrup. I'm pretty sure Dewey is making fun of people with brain damage.

Gist of the movie: A masked killer, Ghostface, terrorizes the town of Woodsboro, California, with a serious of pretty fucking heinous murders that reference horror films. High school senior Sidney Prescott, played by Neve Campbell, and her friends become the focus of the killer(s)'s "game". Directed by Wes Craven, the film stars David Arquette, Drew Barrymore, Jamie Kennedy, Cox, McGowan, and Skeet Ulrich who was briefly the next Johnny Depp. Linda Blair (from The Exorcist), Liev Schreiber, and Henry Winkler are also sort of in the movie in mostly cameos. Can't stress how groundbreaking this felt at the time. A darkly comedic satire of shitty horror tropes that had dominated the genre for half a dozen years prior. It was the only horror film that was aware of other horror films. It was fresh AF and I fucking lost my shit over it.

Shit that sticks out... Gotta start with that opening scene. So much to love here. First, Drew Barrymore, probably the biggest star in the movie at the time, gets offed in a super violent and grotesque way. Psycho did this before when they killed off Janet Leigh but there weren't a lot of other people in that film. When you buy your ticket for this, you know you have this ensemble cast so the message is that anyone can die in this flick. And it's a super long and brutal scene. The killer toys with her and the audience, calling and asking her questions about horror films that her life depends on. Like the whole who was the killer in Friday the 13th question. Barrymore screams "Jason" which is incorrect. It was his mother that did the killing in the first one. I feel that most people, unless they were obsessives like Randy, Stuart (Lillard), or Billy, would probably get that wrong. Then, once she is finally done for and her parents get home, her mom picks up the phone to call the police and they can hear their daughter's gurgling sounds and kindly says something like "sweetie, baby?" The way I interpret this is that she knows her daughter is not long for the world and she just wanted to provide her with some kindness in her last moments. Fucked. But then the husband sends the wife off to the neighbors to call the police and there is their girl, hanging from a tree. This was thankfully not as brutal as it was supposed to be. Barrymore originally was gutted and her entrails were all spilling out and stuff but it earned the movie an NC-17 from the ratings board and they took it out.

Brutal

One nitpicky thing, the computer/technology stuff does not hold up so well. Computers, according to movies in 1996, were magic. Like how Sid calls 9-1-1 via text (this after she rips dumb horror chicks for running up the stairs instead of out the front door and then does just that) which maybe you could do but who would. Also when Dewey, the least likely person ever in the history of film to be remotely computer literate, sees that Sid's dad never registered at the hotel he was supposed to stay at with a quick Google search.

Another nitpick, no way in hell Billy/Stuart could have possibly thought they were getting away with this. They are blaming Sid's dad--why the hell is he doing this?--who they have bound in Stuart's basement for multiple days. Ligature marks, anyone? Plus they are covered in physical evidence and one of them has fake blood all over himself. But sure, you'll get away with it. Not like you weren't already shady as shit and on the cops' radar since the first murder.

"It was du-umb"

Something of note is what a surprisingly sensitive lover Skeet is despite his hatred of Sid because of her mother cheating with his dad (talk about misplaced anger) and being a vicious murderer and all. This is quite the long con. Also, their motives are suspect as hell. Just throwing that out there. Anyway, this, I feel, is why Sid didn't really ask too many questions the Matthew Lillard and Jamie Kennedy run up on her saying that the other one is the killer. She locks them out, must have been a pretty awkward conversation for those two, and Billy shows up after seemingly just being killed. Covered in corn syrup, Sid gives him the gun even though he was obviously the killer. Well, they had just gone to bone town and Billy was like shockingly sweet. He would try to kill her in like less than an hour but not before sharing an extremely tender moment.

The breakout star of this film, the guy who won the movie basically, something I'm awarding to movies from here on out, was Randy. Three of the best scenes in the movie were the result of this dude. The one that is most amaze balls is the one where Jamie Kennedy goes over the rules for surviving a horror. Namely don't drink or do drugs, don't have sex, and don't say you'll "be right back. Just another great meta moment which popularized horror movies being aware of other horror movies (though Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers, Waxworks, and several other movies did it before). The scene in the video store where Randy screams "everyone is a suspect!" is up there as well for all of the same reasons. It is basically the same scene in a different location. One of my favorite scenes this time around featuring this dude that I never really gave much time before was when Courtney Cox attacks him with her giant 1980s cell phone. This is just after she finds blood everywhere in her van and is super on edge when Randy just wanders up and is like, "hey, Gale, where is" and smack. She then takes off in the van when her dead camera guy falls off the top. Sid tries to stop her and it just freaks her out more and she veers off the road and crashes into a tree. Meanwhile Randy, who doesn't know anything is going on still, has just been attacked by a news celebrity for what seems like no reason. This would be like Nancy Grace beating with a Blackberry or something.

Randy's wet dream

So, yeah, greatest movie of all time. Having finally worked my way through all the Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street movies (though I'm still working on my piece for Freddy vs. Jason) I am probably going to revisit all the Scream flicks which I was obsessed with as an early internet user. I remember getting online via dialup and reading about leaked info for the sequel which is basically wacky stuff happening Sid at the sorority movie. So look forward to that.