The seventh entry in the long running horror / spoof franchise sees a returning Neve Campbell as Sidney, Isabel May as her teenage daughter Tatum and Joel McHale as Sidney's cop boyfriend, Mark, who take on Ghost Face, once again, but this time the killer isn't hiding. Also returning is Courtney Cox's Gale (who vanishes part way in, presumably to spare her from the knife yet again), Jasmin Savoy Brown as Mindy Meeks-Martin and Mason Gooding as Chad Meeks-Martin (from Scream V and VI respectively.)
Part 7 cleverly brings the franchise into the modern world by asking, how do we know what's real any more? For three quarters of the screenplay, this works well but the final act and indeed the final reveal is its undoing. Things become very, shall we say, Scooby Doo and the motives are laughable. You almost wish they would have gone with the 'preposterous' at least that would have been fun. See Spoilers.
The scene where Tatum suspects her boyfriend Ben (Sam Rechner) and finds what she believes to be incriminating evidence on his laptop is eye rollingly bad. They could have made this more believable and still pointed the finger at him. Some of the kills in the film are more mean spirited than usual, see the Romeo and Juliet moment in the bar but they're still well done, from a technical point, they're well, 'on point.'
You hope for more from the returning Kevin Williamson (who wrote parts I and II), this time as Director, but you get a merely serviceable slasher movie, that while entertaining (with inventive kills), could have been so much more. It needed a re-write or two.
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SPOILERS (You have been warned!) I can't help but wish Stu had been the killer. Yes, it would have been far-fetched but it would have been far more interesting. As soon as the Janitor (hence Scobby Doo) said what he said, it gave the game away. Either Stu was the killer or the janitor was! They should have showed Stu only once (via video) and then revealed it was him at the end.
SCREENWRITER: Kevin Williamson, Guy Busick. STORY BY: James Vanderbilt, Guy Busick. RUNNING TIME: 114 minutes. CERTIFICATE: 18 / R. USA.
