Scream 7 (2026) – Annoyed Yell

Released: 26th February
Seen: 2nd August

In November of 2023, it was announced that Melissa Barrera was no longer going to be a part of Scream 7. She was fired over a handful of posts she’d made calling the attacks in Gaza a genocide, these posts were deemed anti-semitic by Spyglass… they were not, they were calling out the actions of the government of Israel and specifically those of its leader, who right now has a warrant out for his arrest in relation to war crimes, specifically the genocide in Gaza. This was a pretty obvious overreaction back in 2023 but the feeling of anger towards Spyglass only grew as the war raged on and it became even more obvious that Melissa was right, which led to a lot of people calling for a boycott of Scream 7. This is why I didn’t go see the film during its initial release, despite loving this franchise which was my introduction to the horror genre that I love so much. Now Melissa has come out and said she’s moved on from everything, and the film made so much money that it feels silly to keep boycotting it (this isn’t a Harry Potter situation where the people who made it are so hateful that giving them a dollar actively harms others) so I finally saw it… and it’s probably the worst entry in this legendary franchise.

Scream 7 returns the franchise to Sidney Evans (Neve Campbell) after she sat out the events in New York. Sidney has managed to make a nice life for herself, she runs a little cafe and has a daughter named Tatum (Isabel May) and a police officer husband named Mark (Joel McHale) and has managed to make things pretty normal. Her daughter even has a bunch of people to hang out with, including her boyfriend Ben (Sam Rechner), best friends Hannah (Mckenna Grace) and Chloe (Celeste O’Connor) and some other people who I guess are technically characters but really are just here to up the body count. To make that body count happen, eventually Ghostface pops up and starts doing the stabby thing that Ghostfaces like to do, all while seemingly sending messages from one Stu Macher (Matthew Lillard) who might still be alive. Ooh it’s all mysterious and scary and subversive and not at all a desperate plea from the writer to just enjoy the nostalgia of it all.

To be kind to Scream 7, it has its moments. The opening is, for the most part, genuinely great. Using the opening to comment on people who treat real murders as entertainment is fascinating, setting it all in the Macher house that’s been turned into an Airbnb experience is actually a fun idea that allows the franchise to use familiar iconic imagery in a new way. This franchise also has a few fun kill sequences, the highlight easily being the one that involves the stage set and the flying rig that traps a victim up in it. There’s real terror in some of these sequences, a sense that this Ghostface wants to make his kills more cinematic than the ones who came before him. If the whole film kept this energy up it would probably be a great film – but it doesn’t.

It also is interesting that Scream 7 touches on how AI can impact people by having the killer use AI to create a pretty convincing version of Stu to taunt Sidney. It’s the kind of thing that one would expect Scream as a franchise to comment on and it does certainly comment on it, but mostly the commentary is that it’s annoying and creates confusion which isn’t the most interesting thing. There’s also an attempt to comment on parasocial relationships but it’s so slapdash it feels like something that the filmmakers threw in during a last-minute rewrite, something this franchise is well known for having. It touches on these ideas but never does anything particularly notable with them other than mine the nostalgia the fans have for the now 30-year-old original film.

That need to mine nostalgia is one of the big places Scream 7 falters, largely because its nostalgia begins and ends with the first movie. That kind of makes sense when you realise this was written and directed by the guy who wrote the first movie and that’s clearly the one he’s proudest of because the movies afterwards are either barely addressed or, in one particular case, just don’t count. This means they will bend over backwards to pay tribute to Tatum from the first film, but ignore Sidney’s friend from Scream 2. They try to make callbacks but in ways that just make no sense, or details have changed for no particular reason. Things like Sidney’s husband going from being Mark Kincaid to being Mark Evans, her daughter’s name fully changing between films and ages not lining up, the way some characters behave, details that made this franchise so interesting just lost in the desperate shuffle to salvage the franchise after Spyglass fucked it up.

There’s also just the simple fact that what we’re watching isn’t Ghostface, it’s a supernatural killer who doesn’t make sense in this world. They move in impossible ways (impossible even if you factor in “There’s more than one killer”, which is the standard excuse this franchise gets away with), some of the kills are not physically possible in the reality that Scream lives in (one kill just felt like it belonged in Friday the 13th and not Scream) and the eventual reveal is one of the most lackluster things I’ve ever seen. Ghostfaces in general are meant to not only relate in some way to the hero but be in enough of the film that when they take their masks off you have a moment of “Oh my god”, but that’s not here. They’re at best one-scene cameo characters who somehow get to be the killers with no real reason at all. Sure, one of them tries hard to go for a performance on with the intensity of what Laurie Metcalfe did in Scream 2 but. well, she’s Laurie Metcalfe, one of the greatest actresses of the modern era, she sold it and the person who gets the job to try and recreate that energy just can’t make it work.

Now sure, I can also admit Scream 7 is well shot and there’s a few visuals that really work. Ghostfaces’ mask appearing out of the dark is a great shot, shadows of the killer slowly rising is dramatic and terrifying and the big stage kill I mentioned earlier that involves wirework and backlighting might be one of the most visually spectacular moments in this franchise. It has its moments, it’s undeniably got some great moments… and then it has moments so mind-bogglingly stupid that you wonder if it even belongs in the same franchise. These are meant to be the smartest films in the Horror genre, horror films starring people who have seen horror films and know how to survive them, that’s the big gimmick here but everyone acts so dumb that it hurts. Even Sidney has some insanely dumb moments, like her panic room having one exit that requires slowly sliding through the gap behind a wall where she can be easily stabbed… it’s just dumb, the dumbness hurts.

Scream 7 had everything stacked against it, the way it treated Melissa Barrera was atrocious, they lost the original team, they had to bend over backwards to get Neve Campbell back but there was still hope they could pull it off… but they just didn’t. As a huge fan of the franchise, Scream 7 fell flat, banking on the joy of having Neve back but failing to give her anything to do that warranted her return. At times it felt like a different franchise altogether, like a strange alternate universe where our killer can do impossible things and everyone just doesn’t know about the events of Woodsboro. It banked on nostalgia and that worked for an initial high box office, but it’s not gonna work for longevity. It was a known fact among fans that Scream 3 was the worst of the franchise, but this one might just beat it. Maybe if we’re lucky they’ll fix things for the next one, but I’m not about to hold my breath.