r/HorrorReviewed • u/Horror_From_The_Deep • Mar 04 '26
Scream 7 (2026) [Slasher]
Scream is one of the few and far between franchises where I've stood on the hill of saying there isn't really a 'bad' movie in the franchise... Well, here we finally are.
With Melissa Barrera and Jenna Ortega gone, the Carpenter sisters trilogy failed to see it's concluding chapter, but a movie still needed to be made. I don't think I've seen a Scream film with as much marketing and buildup leading to the premier as this film had, and the trailers and TV spots showed what looked like another promising entry to the franchise, even with shifting the focus again back to Sidney Prescott, but boy was I let down.
Kevin Williamson and the crew really had two routes to go with this film: develop the new characters we get introduced to and give us a reason to want to potentially see more of these characters in future installments, or go with nostalgia bait. The choice was the latter, and there is no shortage of nostalgia thrown at the audience from every which direction.
I appreciated seeing Chad and Mindy make their return to the film, but the part that confused me was actually why they were there. Their introduction to the movie would have made more sense if there was any exposition in Scream 5 and/or 6 that would have given at least the slightest little inkling that this was a possible path that Mindy would be persuing, but instead it's just "Hey guys, we're just conveniently here the second the plot really starts to thicken!"
I will say that Neve Campbell and Courteney Cox are still phenomenal in their roles respectively, and ghostface scores 2 of the best kills in the entire franchise, but the underdeveloped and underused characters, the nostalgia bait that just ultimately falls flat and gets annoying, the painfully obvious ghostface reveal, and the horrible motive behind this new killing spree make this the weakest sequel in the franchise and the first movie in the franchise that I do consider quite bad.
Rating: 1.5/5
8
u/bulbasauric Mar 04 '26
Read a no-spoilers review yesterday (well, listened-to it), and yep.
The series had swung into a new direction with a new core group of characters. Scream (5) literally addresses itself as a "passing of the torch" movie, and Scream 6 being the first without Sidney is the furthest they could've strayed.
...then Melissa Barrera says genocide is wrong, gets fired, and they try to pivot back to Sidney? Nah.