The production of Scream 7 was rife with off-screen drama long before a single frame was shot. On the good side, franchise queen/serial Final Girl Neve Campbell came back after being excluded from Scream VI. However, new heroine Melissa Barrera was axed from the film due to her comments about the Gaza war, with Jenna Ortega also leaving as collateral damage, with the entire story being retooled to pivot away from Barrera. Amidst all the casting drama, the director’s chair swapped out the Radio Silence guys for Christopher Landon, who in turn was replaced by series writer/creator Kevin Williamson.
So, backend drama aside, what about the finished movie?
Scream 7 sees Neve Campbell returning to the fold as Sidney Prescott. Only now, she’s Sidney Evans, married to Pine Grove, Indiana Chief of Police Mark Evans (Animal Control’s Joel McHale), with three children, the oldest of which is a daughter named Tatum (Isabel May from 1883). Her new, peaceful life is interrupted when she starts getting the same old threatening phone calls, only this time, those threats are directed towards Tatum. As Sidney fiercely tries to protect her daughter from the ghosts of her past, she starts to suspect that the calls may be coming from a very familiar foe.
That’s really all that needs to be said about the plot of Scream 7. Williamson’s script, which he co-wrote along with Guy Busick and James Vanderbilt (the pair who also helped out with the last two movies), sticks pretty close to the formula that he helped invent and refine as the creator of the series. It actually may stick a little too close to the formula.
In a series known for surprises and twists, Scream 7 feels like just another slasher movie. It’s a good slasher movie, but aside from the familiar faces and callbacks, it hardly feels like a Scream movie. It doesn’t dive into the self-referentiality for which the franchise is known, so it’s not nearly as much fun as fans have come to expect. The one scene in which Jasmin Savoy Brown’s Mindy is allowed to talk about “the rules” explains it best—this entry is all about Nostalgia.
The mix of familiar faces and new characters is very Scream-esque. Along with Sidney and Mindy, Gale Weathers and Mindy’s twin Chad are both back (Courteney Cox and Mason Gooding, respectively), and the new character suspect list is bolstered by Mark, Tatum, and all of Tatum’s high school friends. So, the mystery is there, and the seemingly endless callbacks and Easter eggs to earlier films make Scream 7 heavy on the nostalgia but light on creativity.
That may be unnecessarily rough. There are a handful of fun moments, even if most are based on the legacy of the franchise. But this just makes it more of a formula slasher sequel and not a Scream movie. It rests a little too heavily on its laurels instead of breaking any new Scream ground. Sure, the kills are bloody and the tension is palpable, and Ghostface is as formidable of a horror villain as he’s (they’ve?) ever been, but the Scream magic just isn’t there.
It would be fun to know what direction Scream 7 was going to take before the departures of Barrera and Ortega, or even if Christopher Landon or the Radio Silence guys had stuck around to direct. Because while Kevin Williamson was able to cobble together a halfway decent Scream movie, it does feel cobbled together. Who knows what could have been done with more time and preparation? We’ll probably find out, because in this day and age, even nostalgia gets a sequel. And if there’s one thing we can count on from the Scream universe, it’s that Ghostface always returns.
GRADE: C
Rating: R for language, gore, and strong bloody violence
Runtime: 1 hour 54 minutes
Release Date: February 27, 2026
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