★★★ out of ★★★★★ | Rated R | Runtime: 1h 52min | In Theaters: February 27, 2026
Directed by Kevin Williamson | Starring Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, Isabel May, Mason Gooding, Jasmin Savoy Brown, Anna Camp, McKenna Grace
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Let me be honest with you for a second. Walking into Scream 7, I had butterflies. Not the terrified kind Ghostface is supposed to give you — the hopeful kind. After the messy off-screen drama that preceded this film (the firing of Melissa Barrera, Jenna Ortega’s departure, death threats, multiple director changes), the fact that we even got a Scream 7 felt like a small miracle. And then there’s Neve Campbell — finally back as Sidney Prescott after sitting out the sixth installment over a pay dispute. That alone was enough to buy a ticket.
So does Scream 7 deliver? Sort of. It’s the most complicated kind of disappointing — the kind where you can feel how good it almost was.
The Story: Sidney Has a New Life. Ghostface Has Other Plans.
Sidney Prescott is done running. She’s built something beautiful in a quiet small town far from Woodsboro — a loving marriage to local cop Mark (Joel McHale, charming and underused), a teenage daughter named Tatum (Isabel May), and what looks like genuine, hard-won peace. Of course, this is a Scream movie, so that peace is about to get absolutely shredded.
A new Ghostface killer starts working their way through the town, burning down familiar houses and gutting teenagers with a familiar kind of precision. Sidney’s daughter Tatum becomes the next target, and Sidney — who has clearly spent years preparing for the day the knife comes back — springs into action with everything she has.
Kevin Williamson, the original screenwriter who created this franchise back in 1996, steps into the director’s chair for the first time. The result is a film that genuinely loves Sidney Prescott, maybe too much, and cares deeply about getting her legacy right. Whether it succeeds is the question that’ll split audiences down the middle.
What Works: Campbell, Cox, and Some Brutally Satisfying Kills
Let’s start with the obvious: Neve Campbell is extraordinary. This is arguably her best performance in the entire franchise. She plays Sidney not as a victim who survived or even a warrior who conquered, but as a real woman carrying decades of trauma who has somehow found a way to build a life anyway. Every scene she’s in crackles with history and weight. If you’ve been watching her fight back against Ghostface since 1996, watching her here will absolutely get to you.
Courteney Cox is equally magnetic. Gale Weathers has always been Cox’s greatest role — sharper, funnier, and more alive than almost anything else she’s done — and Scream 7 gives her one hell of an entrance. The dynamic between Sidney and Gale still works after all these years, and the scenes they share feel genuinely earned rather than nostalgic fan service.
The mother-daughter relationship between Sidney and Tatum (played with real naturalism by Isabel May) is the film’s emotional spine, and it works. There’s something deeply moving about watching Sidney try to protect her daughter from the exact kind of horror she herself never escaped. It gives the violence actual stakes.
Then there are the kills. Scream 7 is the most brutal the franchise has ever been. Several sequences made the preview audience audibly wince — including one involving a beer tap that is genuinely inventive and grisly in a way that would make Wes Craven proud. The opening kill sequence is one of the best in the franchise. If you’re here for the blood, Williamson delivers it with mischievous creativity and no small amount of flair.
What Doesn’t Work: The Reveal, The Finale, and a Franchise Eating Itself
Here’s where it gets painful.
Scream has always lived and died by its third act. The killer reveal — who is it, why did they do it, how does the motive flip your understanding of everything you’ve seen — is the engine of this whole machine. Scream 7‘s reveal is, unfortunately, one of the weakest in the series. The motive doesn’t land with the gut-punch clarity that the best entries have delivered. The final confrontation feels rushed, compressed, like it needed another twenty minutes to breathe. People who’ve been watching this franchise for decades will walk out of that theater feeling robbed of a proper climax.
The screenplay gestures at some genuinely interesting ideas — toxic nostalgia, the weaponization of AI, the way trauma passes between generations. But none of it fully develops. These themes show up, wave hello, and then disappear before the film has the courage to actually say something with them.
The supporting cast is stocked with interesting faces (McKenna Grace, Anna Camp, Celeste O’Connor, Asa Germann) who are unfortunately left with paper-thin characters. The sharpness that defined the original ensemble — those kids in Woodsboro actually felt like people you knew — is mostly absent here. These new characters are suspects and victims, not people.
And while Williamson’s direction is confident when it matters (he stages several sequences with real menace), the film’s geography is often murky. The town never becomes a character the way Woodsboro once did. Locations don’t build dread — they just exist as stages for the next scene.
The Off-Screen Story Nobody Can Ignore
It would be dishonest to review Scream 7 without acknowledging the elephant in the room. This film arrives trailing an extraordinary amount of real-world turbulence — the public firing of its original lead, a director who quit after receiving death threats, a franchise creator stepping in to hold the whole thing together. The film has been positioned by Paramount as a corrective, a stabilizing gesture, almost an apology to Neve Campbell for how the last movie handled her absence.
And you can feel that in every frame. Scream 7 is deeply, earnestly committed to reminding you that Sidney Prescott matters, that this franchise is hers, that the last few years were a mistake. That sincerity is both the film’s greatest strength and its most revealing weakness. It’s so focused on making amends that it sometimes forgets to be a great Scream movie.
The Verdict: Worth Seeing, But Not What It Could Have Been
Scream 7 isn’t a bad film. In a franchise this long, a film this watchable this deep into the series is genuinely impressive. Neve Campbell alone justifies the price of admission. The kills are vicious and memorable. The first two acts hum along with confidence and energy. There are moments — Campbell’s quiet fury, a specific Gale Weathers scene, a handful of kills — that remind you exactly why this series endured for thirty years.
But the finale fumbles. The villain reveal disappointments. And a franchise that once thrived on being smarter than every slasher movie that came before it now struggles to find anything smart left to say.
Is it the worst Scream? That depends on whether you hate Scream 3 or Scream 7 more — and that’s a debate that’ll keep fans arguing for years. But it’s not the triumphant return it was positioned to be. It’s a good-enough sequel to a franchise that, at its best, was never merely good enough.
Go see it for Neve Campbell. She deserves every ticket you buy.
Quick Verdict
The Good: Neve Campbell’s career-best performance in the franchise, Courteney Cox having a blast, some of the most brutal kills in the series, a strong first two acts, genuine emotional weight in the Sidney/Tatum relationship.
The Bad: Weak killer reveal, a rushed and unsatisfying finale, underdeveloped supporting characters, interesting themes that go nowhere, a film more interested in honoring its past than building its future.
Who Should See It: Die-hard Scream fans, Neve Campbell devotees, slasher enthusiasts who prioritize atmosphere and kills over tight plotting.
Who Might Skip It: Viewers who need a satisfying mystery payoff, newcomers to the franchise (start with the original), anyone burnt out on legacy sequel nostalgia.
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
Scream 7 is now in theaters nationwide. Rated R for strong bloody violence, language throughout, and some teen content. Runtime: approximately 1 hour 52 minutes.
