As I am back to pretty much full time in the office as opposed to working from home, I no longer have the time to rewatch a franchise before a new entry. And let's face it, with a movie like Scream 7, I hardly NEEDED to refresh my mind - I've been there on opening weekend for every single entry, and watched them all multiple times since (even the ones I don't care for as much!). But I do at least usually rewatch the previous entry and, if time allows, one other random one just for the hell of it. So I sighed my way through VI again (that third act gets worse with every viewing, folks) and then, for my random one, I opted for Scream 3.
That may surprise those who know me, as I've never exactly been enamored by that one, but over the years I've come to like it a little more than I used to (in fact, Scream 4 now takes my bottom slot). However, the real reason I picked that one is because Kevin Williamson was returning to the series in full force for the first time since Scream 2, as his contributions to 3 and 4's screenplays were largely overwritten by Ehren Kruger and his presence on 5 and 6 were kind of ceremonial at best. So I had a feeling that, for him, this would be a sort of "true" Scream 3 - not that he'd be erasing the entries in between or anything, but sort of taking it back to basics and doing something along the lines of what he would have done had he been able to work on the original Scream 3 as much as he did with the first two. (The return of Matthew Lillard as Stu, which has been publicized to the point that his name is on the poster, also suggested this, since Williamson's original idea had a surviving Stu be the mastermind behind that film's plot. More on Lillard later.)
But even if I was way off, I'd still be grateful for my random selection, because there's a moment in Scream 3 I love that really kind of sets up what I enjoyed most about this entry, and I'm glad it was fresh in my mind. It's about halfway through the movie, when Sid finally arrives in Los Angeles and sees Dewey. After their big hug and hello, Sid takes a pause and says "...is she OK?", meaning Gale. It's a perfectly played moment; Sid and Gale are not exactly besties, and there's some deserved animosity toward the latter, but they had been through this crap together *twice* by that point, and at the end of the day, Gale did save her life, so she can't help but care about the woman even if she's probably hoping for another excuse to smack her in the face. This "frenemy" status is confirmed a scene later, when they meet and share an awkward hug. But since then, we hadn't gotten much of this dynamic; they don't interact much in 4, and in 5 their pairing is motivated more by their shared love of Dewey than any real affection for each other, and then of course in 6 Sid doesn't appear at all.
That unlikely bonding they now have drives a lot of their scenes together here, and while obviously people are coming for a fresh round of Ghostface attacks, for my old ass-who has watched these two characters grow along with me for three decades-I absolutely adored how their relationship is handled here. Gale doesn't enter the story until about 45 minutes in (and does so in absolutely spectacular, crowd-pleasing fashion), and doesn't have much to do in the climax, but she spends nearly every one of her scenes with Sid, and their long, strained history is at the forefront of nearly every one of those encounters. Gale, suffering extreme nerve damage from her near-fatal attack in 6, assumes that since this new Ghostface is after Sid and her daughter specifically that Sid will be proactive and joining her old pal for another crime solving adventure, and is dismayed that Sid just wants to run and keep her daughter safe. I won't run through every one of their conversations, but there's one that genuinely made me tear up, as it offered what may be the first time in this series that Sid actually felt sorry for Gale, and also realizing that despite her fame-seeking demeanor, the woman has done a hell of a lot more for her over the years than she has in return. It's lovely!
But then Ghostface calls again and ruins the whole thing.
OK that's being a bit harsh. But while I enjoyed the movie overall (more than the last one, at least after this one viewing), I can't help but feel that they have officially run out of ideas for the mystery plots. I thought 6's reveal was clunky and plot-hole ridden (still trying to understand how neither Sam, Gale, OR Kirby were totally in the dark about Richie's family), but at least the usual "I'm out for revenge for killing my kid!" thing makes sense. Here, not only is the identity of the killer almost laughably easy to pin (thankful that Dermot Mulroney had the decency to not even bother with an unmasking scene, since it was so obvious - when the killer takes their mask off here, it's as anticlimactic as any such moment has been in this entire franchise), but their motive is utter nonsense, to the extent that I turned to my friend and said "Wait, what?" I mean, to be fair, these people are lunatics, so I guess it kind of tracks that their motive will be equally insane, but it sure doesn't make for a very exciting reveal (also, once we know what their motive was... what exactly was the point of the opening scene?). And as I've noted more than once: nailing the final reel is absolutely crucial to these things, because that's what we're gonna leave on. It doesn't matter how good the first 90 minutes are (and they are, for the most part, quite good here), if it's all building to a wet fart, it's gonna be hard to justify further viewings. Think about the first time you rewatched the OG Scream and noticed that winking nod from Billy to Stu when the former showed up at the party (after killing Tatum) and how fun that was - there's nothing like that here. You'll know who it is as soon as they appear, leaving only the "Why?" to your imagination, and I'm guessing whatever you come up with will probably be more satisfying than what these writers did.
That said, I was charmed by the fact that (minor spoiler, maybe?) Sid's book plays a part in the big "Why I am doing this" speech. Again, Williamson hasn't exactly been a driving force behind the storytelling since the 2nd film, and I wouldn't have been surprised if he flat out ignored 3-6. But no, every single sequel has some kind of connection here, without any kind of retconning or erasing (for those who were fretting about how Sidney clearly had more than one child in 5 - it's explained: the younger girls are off at their paternal grandparents for the week, and we can just assume that the 17ish Tatum, who would have been 12 or 13 in 5's events, was just at school or something). But apart from Chad and Mindy's appearance (which is brief and largely pointless, though I maintain that Mason Gooding is so effortlessly charming that I will forgive the clunkiness just to spend a few minutes with him again), you could honestly pick up from 3, maybe even 2, and not really feel like you're missing out on anything, character-wise.
And actually, if you go from 2, you'll be spared the rest of the fans' agony that Sidney's cop husband Mark is not the same cop named Mark that was clearly set up as a love interest in 3. Scheduling/salary stuff prevented Patrick Dempsey from returning as planned, but since 5 and 6 both went out of their way to establish that Sid was married to "Mark" (as an easter egg for fans), they had to keep the name here. Why he had to still be a cop, I have no idea (Sid has a type?), but Joel McHale makes the most of it, especially in his flirty bedroom scene with Sid, which is basically the first/last time we see her smile in the entire movie. No reference to Dempsey's Mark is made, though given the numerous rather catty jokes about Sid not being in New York (a story decision also dictated by salary squabbles) I wouldn't be surprised if there was a petty line about ol' Detective Kincaid in the script at one point.
Mark 2.0 is also written out as a suspect extremely early, which is weird. Yes, we can expect more than one killer (only Scream 3 tried a solo venture, and given its generally low popularity among fans, I can't imagine them ever trying it again), but GF attacks him at around the 30 minute mark with no other witnesses, so if it was an intentional way to throw us off, it would be a big cheat (in 4, whenever Jill was "attacked," she was with Sid or Kirby at the time), only failing to get the kill due to his trademark clumsiness. Again, the mystery is totally bungled here, with a shocking lack of red herrings, most of whom are canceled out within moments of their introduction for one reason or another, but they could have at least let McHale be a reasonable suspect for a little while, and a few edits could have allowed it to be so.
Especially when the main suspect is... (big spoiler here for those who haven't paid attention to any casting news) Stu Macher. Again, Williamson toyed with the idea of making him the mastermind in 3, and ever since, fans have clung to the idea that he never actually died. They even bring this up in 6, and when Lillard was actually announced as returning in this one, my heart sank a little, because I found it to be an incredibly stupid idea. I know this series can be sloppy in retrospect as each new sequel tries to rewrite some old history (i.e. Gale writing books about people but apparently never looking at a family photo), but even by their standards, I cannot for one second believe that in the FIVE times that a new Ghostface has popped up in these peoples' lives since Stu got a TV dropped on him, no one ever said "Could it be Stu?" if he somehow survived and was merely locked up somewhere. And if he was in hiding all this time, what the hell was he waiting for, for 30 years? You'd think he'd want to at least help out his successors and make sure he got the death blow himself. I won't spoil the particulars of his appearance, but I will say it was actually rather fun to see him again (especially since we've gotten two revivals of Billy) and Lillard seemed to be having fun with his part, despite his brilliant quote about how he appreciates what it did for him but ultimately doesn't care about the character (he likened it to a plumber still caring about a toilet he fixed decades ago). I saw somewhere that people were upset that the series was going the supernatural route, but that's not the case. That said, even a straight up Jason-style undead zombie Stu would be better than what they came up with instead.
Luckily the chases/kills themselves are largely fantastic, and as a result this is certainly the scariest entry since 2. 6 has some good setpieces (the ladder, the convenience store) but they're held back by the film's obvious inability to bring themselves to kill any returning characters. They get around that here by leaving our four returning friends largely out of harm's way (Gale never directly interacts with Ghostface once, and he flat out tells Sid that he's not going to hurt her because he wants her to suffer from seeing her daughter die) and having him focus on the daughter (named Tatum) and her friends. There's a terrific, Argento-y kind of kill involving a harness, and a moment with a beer tap that would make Mr. Voorhees proud. He also stalks more than he has in recent entries, at one point even doing a Michael Myers-style "fading in and out of the light in the background" move, which delighted me. And as bungled as the mystery might be, at least I can say "Yeah, I can see that person doing the Ghostface stuff we saw earlier", which hasn't been the case for five of the last seven murderers (I like 5 a lot, but I don't know if anything in this franchise is as silly as specifically making it clear that it's tiny Mikey Madison lifting Dewey off the ground to kill him). Alas, the flipside is that when you go back and rewatch, there can never be much of a "OK, THIS kill had to be _____, because [other killer] was accounted for" type of puzzling it out, because the culprits were so peripheral to the story anyway it could conceivably be both of them for every single kill. Now, is this better or worse than scenes like the convenience store in 6, where all THREE killers were accounted for elsewhere? You tell me.
And yet all those issues just kept getting shrugged off, because I was getting the first real full on Sid movie since 2 (she was kind of jammed into 3 as much as possible due to having scheduling issues with her show, in 4 she splits her time with the new cast, in 5 she doesn't really enter the story until the third act, and she's not in 6 at all). Neve Campbell came back firing on all cylinders; someone noted that thanks to H20 this is the 2nd time Williamson has brought back the lead for a part 7, but unlike that movie, where Jamie Lee was just playing herself instead of Laurie Strode, Campbell really does feel like the older, wiser version of that normal girl we met 30 years ago. And in a nice contrast from the OTHER return of Jamie Lee (for the DGG Halloweens), she hasn't turned her daughter into a survival expert - in fact it's the opposite, and she's sheltered her so much that the girl doesn't have much of a fight in her at all. Tatum doesn't really know much about her mom's history (at first I thought she was living under a fake name or something and the girl had no idea; she actually does know a bit, but wants to hear it from her mother, not the Stab movies and Gale's books, and Sid just brushes off such prying attempts). Sid has yet another career (now she runs a coffee shop!), but she does mention she used to act, with a note of sadness that she gave it up after her time at Windsor - another nice example of how much of her life has been affected by this stuff, and it's made clear that she's not hiding or running from it, but merely wants to stop having so much of her life being dictated by it as well, which is exactly what running would do. That she eventually finally takes a second to acknowledge how much all this misery has taken a toll on Gale is just icing on the cake - it's a legitimately great arc to play out for the actress, and while Williamson's script (with Guy Busick) may be spotty when it comes to the Ghostface stuff, it certainly doesn't let Sid down even for a second, which more than makes up for her absence last time around.
Of course, as we all know, this was not even the original plan. Whether she would have even been in it at all, I don't know, but the 7th Scream film was going to focus once again on Sam and Tara Carpenter, played by Melissa Barrera and Jenna Ortega, but the former was fired from the film after tweeting in support of Palestine and the latter either quit over scheduling, salary, or in solidarity with her on-screen sister, depending on who you ask. This also led to the departure of Christopher Landon (who received death threats for Barrera's firing, even though he didn't do that himself or even agree with it), forcing Paramount and Spyglass to presumably back up an armored truck to Neve Campbell's house and let Williamson direct himself, something he's only done one other time (Teaching Mrs. Tingle, all the way back in 1999). Both of these moves can only be seen as "Let's make sure fans have something to be excited about to make up for our shitty business practices," and I have to wonder if, as one final punishment to the performers, Williamson was forbidden to even MENTION their two characters. So it's a cynically made movie, and I don't blame those who are boycotting or letting that cynicism (which isn't evident on-screen; if you don't read behind the scenes stuff you'd never know anything was amiss) inform their opinion on the film itself. But luckily, at least for me, while Campbell may have been enticed more by the big paycheck than a burning desire to play this character for a sixth time, it never once shows in the finished product. And Courteney Cox, who seemed a bit bored last time around in her limited role, seems to have some of her old spark again as a result of playing off her old pal instead of a bunch of kids she has no real connection to. A silver lining to a very dark, unfortunate, and frankly icky cloud.
So ultimately, it's another mixed bag like 6, though as of this writing I will give it the edge for the strong character work, the surprisingly graphic kills (holy shit, this film's obligatory "you gotta shoot them in the head" moment), and keeping it grounded after all the worry. Yes, it's a little weird that Sam and Tara aren't mentioned (another reason why Chad and Mindy's appearance felt so forced - the "core four" split up, I guess?) and the film occasionally feels like the very sort of slasher that the first film would have name checked (in fact, outside of the cold open, no horror movies - or the Stabs - are mentioned at all unless you count a marquee showing Texas Chainsaw Massacre). But the shift back to being suspenseful while downplaying attempts to be clever/meta was a relief for me, as I just wanted to get my slasher fix in a familiar setting. That it gave my girl Sid several layers to play AND some true bonding moments with Gale that we've been denied for quite some time now? Icing.
What say you?
P.S. Since it seems relevant for these things: 1 2 5 7 6 3 4.