Scream 7 Review: Director Kevin Williamson's Film Is A Franchise Haunted By Its Own Reflection

Title: Scream 7

Director: Kevin Williamson

Cast: Neve Campbell, Isabel May, Jasmin Savoy Brown, Mason Gooding, Anna Camp, Mckenna Grace

Where: In theatres near you

Rating: 2.5 Stars

Scream 7 arrives with the confidence of a franchise that knows its own reflection too intimately. This seventh outing circles back to Sidney Prescott, now older, guarded, and living under the illusion that geography can outpace memory. The idea is elegant. What happens when the final girl becomes a parent, and fear becomes hereditary? The film has flashes of insight, especially when it peers at generational trauma and the seductive violence of mythmaking. Yet it is also weighed down by reverence for its own past, mistaking callbacks for commentary. The opening promises menace and invention, but as the plot unfolds, familiarity seeps in like a draft under a locked door. The result is a film that wants to move forward but keeps glancing nervously at its rear-view mirror.

Woodsboro, though physically absent, looms over the film like a memory that refuses to stay buried. It remains the psychic birthplace of Ghostface, a figure who has long ceased to be merely a killer and become a ritual. Here, Ghostface feels less like an active menace than a recurring inheritance, a mask passed down by history rather than motive, familiarity dulling fear even as it sustains the myth.

Actors’ Performance

At the film’s emotional core is Neve Campbell, whose performance carries the weight of accumulated memory. Her Sidney is quieter, watchful, and visibly tired, yet never diminished. She portrays her as a woman who has learned that courage is not loud heroism but sustained vigilance. Opposite her, Isabel May gives the daughter role both resistance and empathy, allowing the mother-daughter dynamic to become the film’s most convincing relationship.

Courteney Cox brings familiar sharpness and urgency, though the screenplay offers her presence more than purpose. The younger ensemble, including Mason Gooding and Jasmin Savoy Brown, feels serviceable but underwritten, functioning largely as narrative placeholders. A much-publicised return involving Matthew Lillard leans on novelty rather than necessity, and ultimately feels more distracting than disturbing.

Music and Aesthetics

Directed by Kevin Williamson, the film is cleanly staged but rarely adventurous. Several sequences deliver effective suspense, particularly in enclosed spaces, yet the visual language remains conservative. The setting offers little atmosphere of its own, serving as a stand-in rather than a character. Marco Beltrami’s score relies heavily on inherited motifs, including the recurring use of Red Right Hand, which now signals tradition more than terror. The violence is sharp, occasionally inventive, but rarely surprising.

FPJ Verdict

Overall, this film is caught between self-awareness and self-indulgence. It understands its past intimately but struggles to ask why revisiting it still matters. The themes of inheritance and trauma are potent, yet the narrative resolution undercuts their impact with choices that feel arbitrary rather than earned. What remains is a watchable, sometimes engaging sequel that prefers to echo old screams rather than find a new voice. When the past resurfaces this time, it still demands attention. It just has less to say once you engage with it.