Slasher sequel Scream 7 is a sign that the franchise is now the walking dead

Scream 7

114 minutes, opens on March 5
★★☆☆☆

The story: Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell), who has survived knife attacks over the years from killers using the Ghostface mask first seen in the original movie Scream (1996), now lives a quiet life in a small town with her police chief husband Mark (Joel McHale) and teen daughter Tatum (Isabel May). When a deadly new threat appears, Sidney and fellow Ghostface survivor, television reporter Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox), must stop the rampage.

At a point in many movie franchises, it becomes a zombie – a creature that plods on, unaware that it is dead, but driven by a need to feed.

With the seventh release, the Scream franchise proves that it is not so much a Scream movie, but a mindless, shuffling imitation of one, a husk of a brand raised from the dead to devour box-office dollars.

The scariest thing about this slasher flick is the amount of homage they have stuffed into its two-hour run time, so much so that the call-outs and cameos make the whole affair feel like a holiday variety show.

Kevin Williamson – the screenwriter behind several films in the series including the 1996 original that injected new life into the fading slasher genre – makes his debut here as director.

He tries to pass off the grab bag of tonally uneven fan service moments as irony. He has an advantage, because ironic self-awareness is a trademark of the franchise, a factor that has contributed to its longevity.

An in-universe slasher movie, Stab, is central to its lore, with its tropes used by characters who correctly assume that the Ghostface killer is as much a fan of slasher movies as they are.

The formula – a slasher movie created for fans, by fans – made the first flick directed by horror maven Wes Craven a success.

In this seventh instalment, Sidney is called “the final girl” as a term of respect, bordering on reverence, by characters who are slasher movie nerds. That plot point is very much on-brand, until one realises that she is also trying to live a normal life following the trauma of copycat killers trying to perforate her wherever she goes in the United States.

Despite everyone in town knowing who she is and where she lives, her family go about their average small-town daily lives, even though they are magnets for the morbidly curious and beacons for every crazy in the country.

Sidney’s reaction to slasher fan worship is to give an icy glare, an annoyance she could have easily avoided if she had taken the reasonable option of assuming another identity or migrating.

There are a couple of cursory nods to the fact that self-defence is a family priority, but the amateurishness of their anti-killer prepping will infuriate, not impress, viewers.

This and other lazy plot conveniences shred the remaining bits of goodwill left for the franchise.

After 90 minutes of wildly illogical fights and chases – Mark has to be the most useless police chief in film history, with his force the most incompetent – it culminates in an over-the-top final act that could have been ripped from a Scary Movie (2000 to present) comedic parody of the horror genre.

This reviewer has developed a dislike for the “it’s not that serious, bro” attitude the film adopts to mask its slipping into self-parody.

Hot take: Scream 7 is a lifeless zombie of a franchise that mistakes fan service for film-making.