Scream 7 Review

You either die a satire of dumb slasher films, or live long enough to become one. And unfortunately that is what "Scream 7" is. This is a lame movie, filled with too many characters, too many callbacks, too many conveniences and a chronic lack of intelligence.  

Neve Campbell returns as Sidney, who's living a quiet life in a small Indiana town with her daughter Tatum (Isabel May) and her husband Mark (Joel McHale), the chief of police. She runs a coffee shop (like all mass-murderer survivors naturally do), when she gets a phone call claiming to be from Stu (Matthew Lillard), who fans might recognize as the deceased killer from the first film way back in 1996. (And if you think that's a spoiler, then you clearly haven't checked out the film's IMDB page, but I digress.) Then he video calls her, claiming to be at her daughter's school where she's at theater rehearsal. Good thing she's married to a cop, who sends over all available units, her rushing over as well, but apparently this little town is soooo big that Ghostface is able to kill two students before anyone shows up before disappearing. That rascal.

Tatum is distraught that she just lost a friend, and the cops question everyone who was there. This leads to the only clever line of dialogue, spoken by Tim Simons as the theater director: "she didn't even have an understudy!" But please, one cinematic issue at a time.

Sidney immediately suspects everyone, but especially Tatum's boyfriend (Sam Rechner), for no reason other than he's a boy who has an interest in her daughter. Well, that's not entirely true: he's good with computers, and they can't rule out Stu's call being a deepfake. There's a lot of talk of AI in the script, which, instead of being used to seriously discuss its inherit dangers, or do anything interesting with it, just sounds like it wrote the damn thing. I mean, just think of the possibilities: maybe they could have falsified a video of someone killing someone else, or maybe have the good guys use it to confuse the killers? And that's just off the top of my head, and I'm not even a screenwriter!

A lot has been said about Neve Campbell returning to the role of Sidney, which she famously bowed out of the previous picture over a pay dispute. I'm glad they gave her a butt-load of money, but was this dismal entry worth hurting her legacy? At least when Jamie Lee Curtis returned for the seventh "Halloween" entry, "Halloween H20," the film ended up decent. Not here.

Series veteran Kevin Williamson returns as co-writer (alongside Guy Busick) and graduates to director for the first time for the franchise, but boy howdy is the directing shoddy. The camera flailing around during the many attacks so you never have a clear idea what's happening, the only indication that Ghostface plunged the knife into someone being the subsequent shot of him peering over a corpse. 

And for a film filled to the brim with murders, only one showcased any inspiration; I don't want to spoil it, but let's just say, I'll never drink beer from the tap again without thinking of it. But the setup is unfocused, and the execution is sloppy, the actual "kill" looking obviously like a dummy. It's not even a good shot, just a good kill. The only good shot happens early and involves a stage play, but that is just one scene in an entire film.

That's to say nothing of the fact that the daughter is in a play to begin with playing a dog, even. Actually, all her and her friends are, despite everyone wearing cool clothes, having perfect hair and skin. I mean, sure, maybe that would happen, but back in my day, those were the kids everyone else made fun of.

And then there is the writing, which relies on nostalgia instead of pushing the medium forward. Old characters are introduced to get a paltry few claps from a certain audience, but man are they running out of legacy cast members to bring back. The first film had characters who were relatively smart, at least intelligent enough to have seen a few horror movies before and learn from them. But fond memories are all he has, unable to drum up any suspense, relying on ye olde trope of having people go where they shouldn't, never calling the cops and never sticking together as a group. You'd think they'd be able to learn from their own damn movies! (You would also think, after so many murders happen, that cops would be crawling all over the place, but nope, nothing to see here, officer. )

I'll give and example: later on, after a few slicing and dicing, Sidney cries over the phone to her daughter, under attack from the masked villain, yelling she needs to "shoot him in the head." Great advice, something I often think characters should do when I watch these kinds of movies, but because it'd all be over too soon, we need to have Tatum hesitate, gun literally in-hand, so that the killing spree can go on just a wee bit longer. It's just all so laughable, the franchise edging dangerously close to toppling over into parody; you could have easily called this "Scary Movie 6." At least I wouldn't feel bad chuckling at it.

And then there's the ending, where the killer's (or killers, I'll never tell!) motives are revealed. This is the franchise's famous trick, and while I admit I did not predict it, it also made absolutely no sense. I sat thinking to myself "who's that again" and then "wait that's the reason?!" The whole thing reeks of rewrites, reshoots and reedits, which of course probably happened given its infamously troubled production history, but you'd think with so many cooks in the kitchen that they'd come up with something tasty, even if accidentally.

The Strangers - Chapter 3

"The Strangers - Chapter 3" is not so-bad-it's-good. It's not so-bad-it's-bad either. There's a chance, no matter how slight, that I could have enjoyed it that way. Instead, it's so-bad-it's-boring, barely able to register as a movie only because it features what are supposed to be actors doing what is supposed to be acting in front of a camera. I would love to tell you I sat in my reclining leather chair fuming with frustration, or a smile crept onto my face at its overall absurdity, but no. My body refused to give up even a single emotion, this doesn't deserve any.

This is just an unpleasant cinematic experience, but I couldn't bare give this zero stars, simply because it didn't earn the notoriety that comes with such a rating. So as to congratulate the actual onscreen bloodshed, as uninspired as it is, you get one half instead. Movie, I hope you're happy with yourself.

Madelaine Petsch returns as Maya, fresh off of the events from "Chapter 2," after one of the three masked assailants was killed in a car crash. She watches on from behind a tree in the misty woods as the other two examine her body, pick it up and haul it away in their beat-up pickup. She quickly runs in the opposite direction and finds herself at an empty church. In true horror-movie stupidity, she leaves the door open behind her and, I kid you not, begins to play the organ until one of the killers arrives unmasked (Gregory, played awkwardly by Gabriel Basso). It, apparently, never occurred to her to hide or look for weapons or, gasp here's an idea, look for help before his arrival. Gregory isn't there to attack her, I can only assume because it is a place of worship, but that implies a set of rules the film isn't interested in establishing. They share a shot of alcohol and tells her to leave. What. The. Hell..

She almost immediately runs into the creepy sheriff (Richard Brake) in his SUV, who she suspects is "in" on the murders. She tricks him to exit the vehicle, with it running I might add, and speeds off. He looks on wearily, as if he expected this. Now, I imagine anyone in this situation would drive off to another town for help, but not our Maya. She decides, while driving at night and pumped full of adrenaline, to take her eyes off the winding road, rummaging through the passenger-side for, something. So, of course, she crashes into a tree, and a hooded Gregory almost instantly appears and kidnaps her, again. Why don't they just kill her and end the collective audience's misery? Maya actually does this so many times, where she could easily escape but doesn't, that the only possible explanation is that she must like the thrill of the hunt. Stockholm syndrome, maybe? Ha, like this film would even know how to spell either of those words.

But I know the answer: Gregory, alongside the surviving serial killer woman, are hoping she'll go to their side and become their new "third" person in their murder party. This other woman, portrayed by Ella Bruccoleri, the internet tells me is named Jasmine, but I can't recall it actually ever being spoken, but I digress. Maya, for absolutely no reason, doesn't fight back here, at least not until Greg uncomfortably forces the deceased killer's mask on her and begins to simulate a kiss through their facewear. He storms off and slams the door when she rejects his advances, and the next thing we know, all three are in the truck, searching for new victims. All three have their masks on, but why Maya doesn't like, I dunno, yell or scream or do something to attract attention to her unfortunate situation, isn't in the cards for Alan R. Cohen and Alan Freedland's screenplay. Director Renny Harlin didn't seem to mind, either.

In fact, the only time something resembling an actual plot occurs is when Maya's sister Debbie, her husband and their I think hired bodyguard show up to town and confront the locals at the diner. (Rachel Shenton, George Young and Miles Yekinni, respectively.) No one is freely giving up much, and here is the only time the narrative picks up any momentum. A missing girl, suspect cops and shady townspeople could, at the hands of literally any other collection of filmmakers, make for an intriguing film. Sadly, the threat of resembling competency forces the three out-of-towners to almost immediately be led out into the dark of night, in the middle of nowhere to be attacked and killed off. What was the point of even writing them in?

But now, I know what you're thinking: this movie is bonkers! Just in proofreading my own review I couldn't help but think this was a more interesting motion picture than it really is. But trust me, not only is it more monotonous than it sounds, it will no doubt drag your opinion of what a truly "bad" movie is.

Just by pure coincidence, I happened to watch his 1993 film "Cliffhanger." One of many "Die Hard" clones from decades ago, I sat there today struck at just how decent a director he can be when someone, an actor, writer, producer- anyone, cares even the slightest about the job at hand. I get he hasn't made a decent movie since the 90's, but man, as the director of this entire trilogy, he is such a hack. I can only hope once the cameras stopped rolling this time, he takes time to reflect back on his career, and then swap it.

Inexplicably committed to the lowest common denominator with a story featuring all the dramatic heft of an episode of Degrassi, "The Strangers - Chapter 3" is less interesting than reading the dictionary. At least then I might come across a dirty word.