When I tell you this is being written massively ahead of time, because I am currently prioritising other posts in the schedule, I mean it. It will be over a month before this is published at the time of writing. I don’t know how up to date the information inside this will be at that time. Is it even still in theatres?
There is a new movie out. If you do not want spoilers, do not read this post.
That said, we haven’t spoken about Scream before and I rewatch the whole franchise with some frequency so we’re probably gonna talk about all of them. It’s about time these movies got a post on this blog, after all.
So, read at your own risk, let’s dive in.
SPOILERS, duh
An Introduction
But first because three years ago I put a section like this in my first ever post and I have detested the person who did that since let’s do the details real quick.
Scream was an American Slasher film directed by Wes Craven and written by Kevin Williamson that hit theatres in 1996. Over several weeks it grossed 173 millions dollars in the box office worldwide, making it the 14th highest grossing movie of the year, and before you knew it they were making so much money they made six more, despite it’s initial bombing and considered opening weekend failure. Well done, guys.
The original Scream starred amongst it’s many cast members, Neve Campbell as Sidney Prescott, Courtney Cox as Gale Weathers and David Arquette as Dewey. As well as Matthew Lillard, Rose McGowan, Skeet Ulrich, Jamie Kennedy and Drew Barrymore.
In brief: The general idea is that it’s a riff on the movies, with such iconic lines referencing as such. The first one follows Sidney Prescott as Woodsboro is plagued by a series of brutal murders by a man in a ghostface mask that eventually lead back to her.
Now, the franchise is on it’s 7th Film, with many changes and deaths along the way. Scream 7 was written and directed by Kevin Williamson. The franchise has had it’s claws in many actors along the years and the 7th, being the nostalgia bait that it is, stars amongst the returning cast Neve Campbell, Courtney Cox, Jasmin Savoy Brown, Mason Gooding, Roger Jackson, Matthew Lillard, David Arquette, Scott Foley and Laurie Metcalf. Additionally joining the franchise is Isabel May as Sid’s daughter Tatum Evans and Joel McHale as her husband Mark Evans. Plus a bunch of others, most of which are dead by the end of the film including Mckenna Grace and Anna Camp.
In brief: Not in Woodsboro a series of violent and brutal murders somehow for the sixth time lead back to Sidney Prescott, and the rest is for you to discover by watching it.
At the time of writing Scream 7 is currently in theatres and Scream 1 can be watched on like four different streaming services right now, including BBC iPlayer, Prime Video and Netflix in the UK. Your options are endless. So, go check it out if you’re one of the few that hasn’t already or watch it again if you’ve seen it a hundred times.
Okay, so look…
My enjoyment of something has no correlation to how dumb I may think that thing is, and even if I did think something was insanely dumb that does not mean I did not enjoy or like it. I can think things I adore are dumb and still adore them. Equally, something can be objectively and critically considered a masterpiece and I may think it’s dumb just because I did not personally enjoy it. I contain a subjective multitudes.
That said, I don’t care what the critics said Scream 7 was great. Is it the best movie in the franchise? No. It is, however, a good movie.
I went to see this movie with my mom, as I have watched all other Scream movies with her. We had a blast. We rewatch the Scream movies together quite a bit. It is nice to have something like this that we can share. Sometimes a franchise just needs to come to an end and with twenty years under it’s belt Scream is starting to feel like one of those. But in this instance I don’t care because the fact they’ve made so many of these cash grabs means I get to continue enjoying this franchise with my mother. We continue to have this that we can share together, and while Scream may at some point start to feel like it’s overshot it’s welcome the films are still pretty damn good. So, we’ll still keep going to see them and rewatching them together, because I am, on occasion, sentimental, and the quality of the thing we watch together is irrelevant to the the value of the time we spend together.
That said, I still enjoyed the f**k out of this movie.
So, Let’s get into some thoughts, shall we?
Ghostface
Look, at some point they are going to run out of people that can be related to Sidney and also want her dead. Like one person can only have so many murderous family members and friends, ya know?
So, sure, it wasn’t the best Ghostface reveal we’ve ever had. Actually as far as Ghostface reveals go it was probably the worst one so far. I didn’t dislike it, though. Her motivations were confusing and she was so forgettable I have already forgotten what her name even was. Or the guys. Or really why she was doing it at all… but I do remember it was her neighbour and they were in no way mysteriously related by Hollywood affairs, High School affairs, blood or Woodsboro in general. She was basically just some random person… which is a little underwhelming.
Though, to go from Scream 2 featuring a mother who goes on an elaborately orchestrated killing spree because her son died to a mother who either arranged the murder of or killed her own son… what a turn of events… I mean, that was truly the most baffling one, especially because his murder is particularly brutal. I know she has a line about it, I don’t remember what it was. I will say, it makes it feel like the script was mostly written and then they got to the end and pointed to any two still surviving characters to be Thing 1 & Thing 2 and hoped it made sense in retrospect with whatever bullshit reason for multiple violent murders they could pull out of their ass. A point I say with love because I legitimately enjoyed this movie.
But, if you were Sidney, how many people are you going to let into your inner circle without a thorough background check at that point, ya know? Like the people around her give her grief for being traumatised but I personally don’t think she’s neurotic enough about it. Girly, is still picking up the damn phone seven movies later. I don’t answer the phone now and I haven’t discovered a psychotic killer on the other end at least five times. It may not be healthy, but she should be more paranoid. She has every right to be and evidence to back it up!
“Sidney, you should chill out. That was a fluke.” It’s happened SIX times! If anyone has earned the right to f**k off into the woods and never talk to anybody again it’s Sidney f**king Prescott.
Which is to back up my point that the fact this Ghostface is someone that as far as I could gather from the movie she’s just sort of friends with out of sheer proximity in what can mostly be chocked up to the woman’s sheer determination completely tracks. There’s only so many times you can suspect the boyfriend before you stop dating, only so many times a member of your friend group can go psycho killer before you just stop making friends.
At this point, Sidney deserves an award for having a life at all. I can say with some assured certainty that that would not be me. Not only because I would not have survived the first movie, but assuming I had, I do not like people as it is and if you give me enough reasons to justifiably cease socialising all together I would. Especially now you can live almost an entire life completely remotely. I can get everything I need delivered and everything I could possibly need is at the touch of my finger tips. If I don’t have to leave the house, I won’t.
Evans’
As far as I can tell she is Sidney Evans now. IMDb seems to think so, and I am going to take that as gospel. I mean, if I had been infamous since I was a teenager I too would change my name but not many TV Shows never mind major motion picture franchises have the balls to change a lead characters name, even if it is just their surname, this late in the game. So, go them, I guess. Sidney Prescott is iconic but I’m sure you can make Sidney Evans just as iconic.
Speaking of Evans, let’s discuss the family, shall we?
Firstly, Mark. Can’t lie the only other place I have seen Joel McHale to my immediate memory is Community, and let’s just say that is a vastly different character.
I was so sure Mark was gonna die. Not just in a ‘he’s definitely dead’ when he got attacked kind of way but in a legitimately before the man was stabbed even a little bit I was so sure he was not going to survive this movie and the fact he does is truly a franchise miracle at this point. The partners never survive. The fact that he survived his wounds is further a miracle because that man should be dead, whether I expected it to happen or not. His brutal murder was the least surprising, like of all things to see coming, that was definitely it.
Sidney marrying a cop makes sense, though, considering. Plus, hey, at least for the period of time where he was conscious, not only was he actually useful, both as a person and utilising his police resources, he didn’t try to downplay this shit like half the out of the loop friends seem to in the past ones. Unfortunately, he was unconscious before we could get anything useful out of his police resources, but, dang, the man did try.
Secondly, Tatum. I have watched Alexa & Katie at least twice, and look how far Isabel May has come! She is brilliant in this movie and I would expect nothing less after seeing her performances in Alexa & Katie, which is exceedingly underrated and even if you’re not it’s target audience you should definitely check it out at least once.
I get the sentiment in naming her after her one friend but 1) Tatum’s not even the only ‘best’ friend she’s had die to psychotic killers in the past few years and 2) Tatum’s right, girl, she did get gruesomely murdered in a garage door. However, I understand the sentiment, it’s rather sweet really and also doubles as nostalgia bait for the fans – which describes most of this movie.
Tatum was a fun enough character, though. I liked her. More than OG Tatum but I am probably a little bias. Plus, hey! She lived! The whole family lived! In fact, the only people who died are new people we didn’t care about, which is what happens in most of these movies but that’s hardly the point. I thought she was interesting, and they used her for a shit ton of parallels to the first movie, obviously, with some success far as I’m concerned.
Finally a few points on Sidney, it’s implied but I love Sidney as a character. I think she has every right to curl up into a ball and never face the world again, but we’ve seen over the course over the past few movies a woman who just wants to move on. She’s Sidney f**king Prescott, goddamn it. This shouldn’t be her life but it is and she has handled it with poise and elegance. It’s admirable, in some ways. Dubious, that she continues to answer the phone, but admirable nonetheless that she endeavours to live in spite of it.
Alongside that, she’s f**king cool! She is racking up a kill count as high as half these serial murderers and she is doing it out of sheer determination and stubbornness, while delivering some truly iconic one-liners. She is The Scream Queen. The Final Girl. Fighting till the very last stitch pops and she lands at least 5 shots in the head, all the while gaining the scars to match. Seriously, she must have so many scars.
I f**king love Sidney Prescott, sorry, I mean Evans.
Some Assorted Thoughts
Let’s round this off with some stray thoughts. Positive and negative.
No one’s injuries ever make any f**king sense! Mark can be stabbed like 40 times and still somehow fucking live but others can be stabbed maybe twice and collapse into a pile of corpse. The killers can be shot and stabbed and all the f**k else and still keep going like they’re juiced up on super soldier serum. Perhaps we should just check if there’s something in the water that’s giving these people like Wolverine level healing factor, strength and sending them batshit crazy. Ya know, maybe it’s not the movies that made them killers, it’s all the coke they are clearly on.
Like as my mother pointed out, by the time they do the face reveal they should be covered in blood already from the many hits they took while killing people who fought the f**k back all movie. Are those masks made of kevlar? Are they wearing like f**king bikers helmets beneath their sparkly little robes?
I happen to be a fan of Mckenna Grace, and somewhere in the mess of this movies promotional material, I fully forgot she was in it… but I knew she had the song! I managed to convince myself that she only did a song for the movie and wasn’t actually acting in it. So that was a pleasant surprise.
Then she died first! Well third but the other two don’t count. She died first! And it was gross.
She was very good in this movie, overall, though, and the song slaps.
The kills were disgusting. Like, look, I can stomach plenty but I have limits and this movie was f**king disgusting. Like they’ve always been brutal but they just keep trying to one up themselves in increasing levels of violence. At some point you’re going to run out of violence to top.
This movie is nostalgia bait and I think that’s sort of the point. Like it feels like that’s part of the meta shit they always have going on. I like their meta shit. It is arguably the only reason I enjoy these movies because I generally detest horror/slasher movies, but I like these ones. They don’t freak me out so much and I think it is because of the meta narrative they use.
That said, it is nostalgia bait. I don’t personally think that that’s a bad thing. It works for a reason. We like that stuff, we eat it up. Marvel can go over the top with it sometimes, but, I think it tends to be done very tastefully by most people. I quite enjoyed Scream’s execution to be honest. I’m sure it was part of the scrambling recovery after the original Scream 7 went completely belly up during production, but it doesn’t not work. I am not going to way in on the behind the scenes stuff, though, because I am not nearly informed enough.
You can, though, sort of tell, just a little bit, this is an entirely different direction to where things were initially planning to go. Also, I got into Scream because Jenna Ortega was in the new ones and now she’s not… at least Wednesday Season 3 is in production! That’s exciting.
I will say, what the f**k are Chad and Mindy doing here? Like I get the attempt to maintain canon and keep that somewhat wavering and tenuous connection at this point after Sidney skipped out on Scream 6 but like also they basically did nothing all movie, were barely involved in the massacre they were actually there for and then got stabbed (again) barely and somehow – somehow – survived that also. Honestly, Chad should’ve been way dead in Scream 5, the fact this kid continues to breathe is a miracle within and of itself.
I did notice Mindy had a she/they pin, though, which I liked.
Also, how much did they pay Neve Campbell to come back? She backed out of Scream 6 because of conflicts over payment, right? So just exactly how many millions have we bribed this woman with to come back? I’m assuming it’s a shit ton of millions. At this point, she’s earned them.
The use of AI. I think this made the film poignantly relevant to today. The Scream movies have always had some commentary engrained into their meta narratives and the use of AI in the killers plans certainly creates a relevant commentary on the current landscape.
Let’s be clear here, AI is bad. It’s bad for the planet, it’s bad for the arts and it’s bad for the industry. F**k AI.
However, this film fictionally uses it to great effect. It is, of course, the grounds on which they bring back a bunch of dead people for taunting cameos, but also it just creates an interesting world in which AI is used to a masterfully evil way because it’s bad, actually. Did you catch that? It’s bad. Stop using AI.
I remember seeing the cast announcements and being like ‘How tf is he back?’. He’s not, it turns out. It’s a deep fake, except it’s not. In universe, deep fake, AI and fake as f**k. For reals, though? He totally shot that, and there they are! Look! At the premiere! There is so many people in this cast, oh my gods-
To Conclude
There’s only so much you can say about a singular movie you’ve only seen once, and as it is still in theatres, I have only seen it once. I do not like theatres that much. I’m a bit of a fidget.
So! Regardless. Here is a post on it. Hope you enjoyed reading it and you’ll tune in for the next one.
As always:
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On to the next!
Disclaimer: I do not own any of the images, narratives or characters present or referenced in this post. All rights belong to Paramount Pictures and all other relevant parties.