#268: Scream 7

Release Date: February 27th, 2026

Format: DCP (Cinemark at The Pike Outlets in Long Beach, CA)

Written by: Guy Busick and Kevin Williamson

Directed by: Kevin Williamson

1.5 Stars

Scream 7 suffers more or less the same fate as last year’s nostalgia-core film I Know What You Did Last Summer; namely, it wants us to take this stuff seriously. 

In Scream 7’s case, we’re supposed to feel the emotional weight of Neve Campbell’s iconic “last girl” character, Sidney Prescott, as she deals with the trauma of surviving the horrific Ghostface murders 30 years ago as a teenage girl. Writer/director Kevin Williamson, who wrote the original Scream (and a few of the sequels), gives Sidney several weighty monologues where she talks about guilt, loss, and healing. 

This is all well and good, but Williamson is also trying to mix in those hallmark Scream notes of ironic humor and meta, genre-bending plot twists that made the original Scream such a fun hit back in 1996. What he ends up with is a mishmash of moods that makes the whole thing feel a bit pointless (that’s before the “Huh, whatever” ending).

He’s also a first-time director, and it shows. The original Scream had the legendary Wes Craven behind the camera, who created some of the most memorable images in horror film history (the opening Drew Barrymore set-piece alone was an instant classic). Williamson, in contrast, films Scream 7 like a made-for-TV movie (and not a particularly good one). 

I will say that there is some value to Scream 7’s pedigree, since it’s had many of the same principal writers and performers over the past 30 years. There’s a homey continuity there that eludes other horror franchises like Halloween or Friday the 13th.

It might be comfortable, but it tastes a little stale.