Time for Bed
The ‘Scream’ franchise is this close to becoming a parody of itself.
scream 7
Director: Kevin Williamson • Writers: Kevin Williamson, Guy Busick
Starring: Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, Isabel May, Joel McHale
USA • 1hr 55mins
Opens Hong Kong March 5 • III
Grade: D
What was that line in The Dark Knight? Play the hero long enough and you eventually become the villain? Also, was it The Dark Knight? Don’t care; not Googling. Point is, Kevin Williamson’s Scream and the subsequent franchise it bore have played the smart-mouthed meta hero long enough that it has, in fact, become the villain. After the at least decent, reimagined sequel-reboot (the machinations of which are lovingly detailed in Scream ’22) by Tyler Gillett & Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and writer Guy Busick, new lead Melissa Barrera got fired for voicing the hot take that genocide is bad, co-star Jenna Ortega bailed for either not get a payday, a conflict with shooting Wednesday or in solidarity with Barrera depending on your source (all valid) and then Gillett and Bettinelli-Olpin took off because fuck this mess – all right before Scream 7 was supposed to start production. That’s way more drama – and way more horror – than is legitimately in this movie.
In the brouhaha original writer Kevin Williamson stepped in to do so quick work re-working the script and take over directing, even though he’s made a grand total of… checks notes… one other film, the so-so Teaching Mrs Tingle way back in 1999. None of this is at all heartening, and sure enough Scream 7 has gone full fandom. As in, the only people who are going to care and/or even get this are die-hards and completists, and if that’s you have at it. Bless ’em, they’ve already forked over US$100 million, possibly to bask in the return of Neve Campbell as OG Scream final girl Sidney Prescott. Guess it was the right call.
Is this her whole career?
As is the case with so many of these long-in-the-tooth horror franchises, which rely so much on narrative backflips and mental gymnastics to keep them trucking along (Jason going to space is mwah, classic) is that eventually the silliness takes over and we forget what made Jason, Freddy, Michael Myers, Pinhead and Ghostface so scary in the first place. It’s easy to forget that the teenager deaths looked like murders or outlandish suicides in the original A Nightmare on Elm Street and no one would believe the kids when they said, “Nah-uh, there’s a burnt dude with knives for fingers killing us in our dreams.” At least it was scary until Freddy Krueger started quipping all over the damn place all the time.
Similarly, it’s easy to forget Stu Macher and discount Johnny Depp Billy Loomis were on a murder rampage for shits and giggles. That’s what made it terrifying. So when Sidney, now Sidney Prescott-Evans thanks to new husband Mark Evans (Joel McHale), starts getting harrassing calls with “the voice” in her new Pine Grove, Indiana (where now?) coffee house, she initally brushes it off as another of the endless string of Ghostface fanboys that have crossed her path. But this time it’s no joke and they’re (there’s always “they”) after Sidney’s dull as dishwater daughter Tatum (Isabel May), of whom Sidney has been way, way overprotective. Tatum is surrounded by the requisite gaggle of possible stalkers, including her boyfriend Ben, her besties Chloe and Hannah and the Stab-obssessed weirdo Lucas. After the pieces are on the board it’s up to Sidney and Mark – who’s the chief of police because of course he is – to solve the mystery, remarkabley free of meta horror convention breakdowns. Those are getting tired.
Just kidding! No, that shit starts up again when intrepid (?) reporter and fellow Ghostface survivor Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox) shows up with more Ghostface survivors, the utterly obnoxious and entirely grating Mindy Meeks-Martin (Jasmin Savoy Brown) and her twin brother Chad (Mason Gooding) in tow to get what’s probably the worst exclusive interview known to the fifth estate. And around we go.
Busick has chalked up a fair number of genre surprises in the last few years, among them Ready or Not, Abigail and the out of nowhere corker that is Final Destination: Bloodlines, so it’s not beyond reason to hope that some of his creative horror sensibilities were left behind in Williamson’s 30-minute-makeover of the first script for Scream 7. I don’t think they did. These copycats and long lost revenge seekers have popping up for six movies now and in #7 they may have reached a breaking point narratively, and sadly Williamson isn’t the filmmaker to carry whatever cachet is left forward cinematically. There’s no flair to the proceedings, and no grounding in the horror fundamentals that Wes Craven (RIP) and even Gillett & Bettinelli-Olpin brought with them in order to balance the snark with the scares; even Craven lost the plot a bit. This is just frustrating. Putting Campbell front and centre is a waste of energy, there’s sloppy casting that will have any movie buff calling out the killer in seconds, threads are dropped like they’re on fire, never to be addressed again, the opening kill has absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the story. It just muddies the waters and makes the paper thin plot even more nonsensical, and most egregiously there’s a paltry two – two! – gory-good kills. Gillett & Bettinelli-Olpin were on to something when they relocated the action from the heartland to the big city; it brought a new friction to the familiar plot and juiced a tired property. This is a step back, and feels a lot like the Rian Johnson-JJ Abrams tug-of-war that put the nail in the Star Wars coffin. Worst of all, Scream 7 has become precisely the product it so robustly took the piss from in 1996.