Scream 7 Is All Mask, No Menace

Scream 7

★ ½

Scream 7 begins with Sidney Evans (Neve Campbell) living in a small town with her husband Mark (Joel McHale), a cop, and their teenage daughter Tatum (Isabel May). Sidney is constantly at odds with Tatum, and Mark does his best to mediate.

This film starts off decently and quickly disintegrates under the weight of its own plot, relying too heavily on the nostalgia built into the series. It’s like a bottle of 12-year-old Chivas Regal. At first sip, it’s not completely awful. But the more you drink it, the more offensive it becomes to the palate.

Michelle Randolph as Madison
© 2026 Paramount Pictures

What made the original Scream so compelling wasn’t its villain, now known as Ghostface. It was the high concept: a horror film where the script pokes fun at the genre while clearly stating the common “horror film rules” and falling victim to the rules themselves. Ghostface was never a scary character. But the original film managed to create incredibly tense, terrifying moments that pushed you to the edge of your seat and made your significant other grip your hand a little tighter.

Ghostface is always revealed by the end of each film, a gimmick easily comparable to how the Scooby-Doo gang unmasks the monster at the end of an episode. It’s a gimmick that has grown weaker and more watered down with each film. At this point, who cares?

Ghostface is at it again
© 2026 Paramount Pictures

The Voice—which could belong to any character, disguised through a voice changer—is supposed to be a menacing caller in the night, taunting victims with horror-trivia games or simply telling them they’re going to die next. It was effective in the first film. By now, the Voice just reminds me of Tigger from Winnie-the-Pooh.

Scream 7 seems to be aware of the waning interest in the gimmickry. It’s so desperate to be relevant it involves an AI element that’s supposed to create confusion about the killer’s identity. It also leans hard on nostalgia and gets lost in it. But the story is so poorly written that none of this is particularly effective.

Neve Campbell as Sidney Evans
© 2026 Paramount Pictures

As you might guess, the plot is pretty simple. Sidney lives in a small town with her family. She owns the local coffee shop. She gets a call from the Voice. Ghostface shows up, does a little killing, and the whodunit begins.

There have been several characters behind the Ghostface mask in the films. Every one of them is extremely clumsy. Main characters get the better of the killer so easily that, in this film, Ghostface takes so many knocks to the head you forget there’s a human being behind the mask.

Even when Ghostface takes several bullets to the chest—fired through the coffee shop wall by a daughter who has never held a gun before, let alone the hand cannon Sidney keeps in her office safe—you’re still supposed to shoot the killer in the head. To make sure they’re really dead. Something no one in this series ever seems to remember.

Isabel May as Tatum Evans
© 2026 Paramount Pictures

In Scream 7, the series has lost its way completely. We can only watch the killer trip over that several-sizes-too-big robe so many times before our eyes get sore from rolling into the backs of our heads. At least these killers know how to keep a mask on. That thing never comes off until the killer reveals themself or dies.

Here, seven isn’t a lucky number, and it may be the nail in the coffin of a once-entertaining franchise. There’s always direct-to-video. Something the original killers would crawl out of their graves to prevent. I’d stream that once.