Scream 7 (2026)
Directed by: Kevin Williamson
Premise: Sidney (Neve Campbell), the survivor of the original film, is terrorized by a new killer wearing the Ghostface mask.
What Works: Scream 7 is a back-to-basics sequel. Rather than invest in novelty or frills, the filmmakers return to the roots of the franchise by bringing back Sidney, setting the action in a small town, and emphasizing slasher violence. The movie is generally effective. Scream 7 is Kevin Williamson’s second directorial feature following 1999’sTeaching Mrs. Tingle and he proves capable. The attack scenes draw out the tension before the hit. It’s also a brutal movie. Some press coverage has framed Scream 7 as correcting the supposed uber-brutality of Scream VI (which was nonsense, all of these films were quite gory) but the seventh movie is as bloody as anything we’ve seen in this franchise; the violence is staged with occasional artfulness. In revisiting Sidney thirty years after the original picture, Scream 7 accounts for the passage of time. She’s now the mother of a teenage daughter (Isabel May) and the two of them have some effective moments, especially as Sidney tries to shield her daughter from the horrors of the world.
What Doesn’t: Scream 7 is bedeviled by the feeling of forced familiarity. The fifth and sixth films had pivoted to a new cast but those characters are absent or backgrounded in favor of returning to Sidney. This franchise had previously concluded Sidney’s story—twice—and bringing her back feels like regression. Scream 7 was written and directed by Kevin Williamson who wrote the original movie and was involved to varying degrees in the sequels. Scream 7 comes across as Williamson doing his version of Scream 4 and the 2022 reboot sequel. (Williamson is credited as the writer on Scream 4 but his script was rewritten by Ehren Kruger, writer of Scream 3.) The new movie deals with some of the same themes as the fourth and fifth installments but it doesn’t do them nearly as well. Overall, Scream 7 isn’t about much of anything. Sidney’s teenage daughter isn’t much of a character and as brutal as Scream 7 is, the film lacks any subversive edge. It’s not satirizing the culture or the media the way other Scream films did nor is it moving the franchise forward. The film’s lack of substance or motivation is most obvious in the beginning and the end. The pre-title murder sequence does not connect to the rest of the story. The reveal of the killer is also fumbled. Their motive comes out of nowhere and it is disconnected from the violence; there is no reason for the killer to murder most of these victims.
Bottom Line: Scream 7 succeeds as a generic slasher picture. It’s not a terrible movie but it adds nothing new to the Scream franchise. Where other movies were built around ideas, Scream 7 has a vacuousness center.
Episode: #1090 (March 8, 2026)