Movie Review: Scream 7

 

Michael's Movie Grade: C+

A decent entry into this horror franchise. 

What actually worked surprisingly well here was the relationship between Sidney and her daughter. While this relationship falls into clichés, it is also quite well fleshed out and kind of touching. This is helped by Neve Campbell and Isabel May, simply having great chemistry. While the teenage daughter at first comes off as a brat, she actually grows into a really likable character as the film goes on. Sidney herself is the great character that fans of this franchise have loved since 1996. The film also benefits heavily from some excellently executed suspense scenes, the gory but creative kills the franchise is known for and some effective meta humor. 

Unfortunately, despite all this the movie is never actually scary. You can see each jump scare coming from a mile away. I am usually someone is quite startled by jump scares. However not a single one of them worked on me in this movie full of them. This movie also suffers from some rather bland new supporting characters. I can guarantee you that even diehard fans of this franchise will forget most of these supporting characters exist in a year from now. 

However, the biggest flaw of this movie is the reveal of who is behind the ghost face mask. At first it doesn't make much sense at all. Then the character explains the motives behind the killing. The problem is that this is the first time we are hearing of any of these motives. As much as this is a horror franchise, it has also become a murder mystery franchise, where we try to guess who this Ghostface's identity is and what the motives are. Trying to guess the who and why is an important part of movies like this. While you may be able to guess who, simply from a process of elimination, you cannot guess the why because you are not given specific clues. The reveal also makes one of the kills make no sense. The filmmakers try to explain this kill with a very brief line of dialogue. However, this reasoning feels completely forced and comes out of nowhere. This reveal will certainly ruin the whole movie for many people, even if they enjoyed what came before.

Despite its flaws including a truly horrible ending, this is still a fun little horror flick.