Scream 7 was just released on February 27th and was met with a lot of criticism. 

Some fans even went as far as to call it worse than flops like Morbius and Madame Web, but was it really that bad, or are people overexaggerating online for views?

I took it upon myself to go see the film in theaters to find out.  

Going in, I knew I loved all the Scream movies before this one. Some are better than others, but overall, I am a massive Scream fan, so I was eager to see the return of actors like Mathew Lillard as Stu Macher and Neve Campbell as Sidney Prescott. 

I was also very excited for new faces like Isabela May as Sidney’s daughter, Tatum Evans, as well as Mckenna Grace as Hannah Thurman.  

I thought the opening scene of the film was good overall. Seeing a couple rent an Airbnb that was Stu Macher’s house turned into an attraction was really interesting to see. 

There were a lot (and I mean a lot) of fake outs, from the animatronic Ghost Face to the boyfriend dressing and scaring his girlfriend as Ghost Face, but overall, the final kills were really cool to see. 

I especially love how Ghost Face lay on the floor, knife pointing upwards, as the girlfriend fell to her death. I think it was a creative scene, but it could have dragged out a lot less.  

The new characters weren’t too bad but left a lot to be desired. 

McKenna Grace’s character, Hannah Thurman, was just kind of there. I would have liked to see more of her character, especially since she was marketed so heavily for the film. 

Hannah Thurman appeared in a scene walking with Tatum Evans, during their play rehearsal, and shortly after, Ghostface killed her.  

McKenna Grace even created a song titled “Twisting the Knife” with Ice Nine Kills, which I found very catchy. So, with all of that marketing, I was very surprised to see her character killed off so early into the movie. 

The standout new character was Tatum Evans, Sidney Prescott’s daughter. Her character arc basically revolved around her living up to her mother’s name. 

Throughout the film, she asked about her mother’s past, but Sidney talked little of it due to her past trauma. When the new Ghostfaces start wreaking havoc, Tatum is forced to use her survival skills, learning a lot from her mother. 

At first, she is shown to be hesitant and cowardly, but by the end of the film, she has her redemption, and she kills one of the Ghostface killers. 

It was a pretty simple and boring arc to me. I felt they could’ve done a lot more with her character. She just felt like a filler role when she should’ve been developed way more. 

We mainly see a couple of scenes with Tatum and her friends or scenes with her boyfriend, Ben Brown, who is also a pretty flat character, and that is about all we get before she is forced to go against the Ghostface killers.  

While I have a lot of issues with the movie, I will say the kills were very creative and unique. For example, Hannah’s death on the wires with Ghostface slicing at her was very disturbing and well executed. 

They really went all out with the gore and brutality of Ghostface. It very much reminded me of how ruthless Ghostface was in Scream 4. 

I also really liked Lucas Bowden’s death with the beer tap. It was very brutal and reminded me of the older deaths shown in the older Friday the 13th movies. These are the kind of creative scenes you just don’t really see in horror movies anymore, so I was really impressed with how all-out they went with the kills, brutality, and gore in this installment.  

Overall, the Ghostfaces this time around were very interesting and fun… until their big reveal at the end. 

The two Ghostface killers use AI to bring Stu Macher to life through video calls, where he taunts Sidney. Mathew Lillard did an excellent job in this role and was intimidating with a sick sense of humor, much like how he was in the original.  

At the final confrontation of the movie, we see many returning characters in AI form taunting Sidney. We see Stu Macher again, Nancy Loomis (Ghostface of Scream 2), Roman Bridger (Scream 3 Ghostface), and Dewey (deceased love interest of Gale Weathers). 

We then see a Ghostface holding Sidney’s husband and daughter captive. The Ghostface reveals himself to be a worker from Fallbrook Psychiatric Hospital named Marco Davis. 

This is the part of the film that ruined everything for me. 

We see Davis in just one scene, where he shows Stu Macher’s old cellphone and gives them some clues for the Ghostface mystery. Was it surprising? Yes, but it wasn’t creative at all. It just felt like they chose a random character for no reason.  

The second killer revealed herself to be the obsessive neighbor, Jessica Bowden. This also made no sense, since she was barely involved in the plot at all. She was such a random choice. 

Bowden explained how she killed her abusive ex-husband and wanted to be Sidney and how she met Marco Davis, all of which happened off-screen and was barely even hinted at. She mentions her ex-husband once in the movie towards the beginning, and that’s all we get as a hint, and calling that a hint is a stretch.  

The family kills the two Ghostfaces quickly, and the film wraps up from there, giving a pretty closed ending.  

I felt we lost a lot of the brutality and ruthlessness shown in the first two acts of the movie. Everything was very rushed for the convenience of the plot. With the film being just under two hours, it felt like we didn’t get enough time with certain characters, yet certain scenes dragged out and somehow also felt really slow at the same time. 

I was disappointed with the third act. The fun of the Scream movies is that they keep you guessing. In this movie, there wasn’t enough time spent or shown with the characters for me to even make a solid guess, and the reveals were so random and unwarranted.  

I really tried to love the movie. 

I really wanted to go against the mass amount of criticism this movie is already getting, but I sadly have to say, a lot of the criticism is warranted. 

I really loved the cast, and seeing Mathew Lillard return was great. I didn’t even mind the AI aspect of the film since the Scream franchise is very meta and commenting on something like AI is very promising. 

Despite this, instead of trying to do something interesting with it or sending a message about AI use, it felt like they just made it to bring back old characters for nostalgia, a common schtick in modern cinema.  

Overall, I loved the brutality that was shown by the Ghostface killers, but towards the end, they really dialed it down and rushed the ending, making for a very flat, abrupt, and honestly, lazy ending. 

If they managed to flesh out the killers more and added around 30 more minutes to flesh out some of the newer characters (and maybe cut a few), I think this movie could’ve been a lot better, but instead, we got wasted potential. 

Scream 7 was a very rushed, lazy, and forced entry into the Scream franchise.