How the Scream franchise’s mask slipped

When Scream was relaunched/remade/rebooted/requel-ed/whatever in 2022, under the direction of Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, something was missing. It treated the first four films as sacred texts, with a sincere reverence that felt out of character. Scream never took itself too seriously, so to build on its legacy is to not care about its legacy. Craven and Williamson used the original films to satirise the idea of too many cooks in the creative process, but here it had become a reality. 2022’s Scream arrived with a surfeit of fanfiction ideas, namely Melissa Barrera’s Sam Carpenter being the illegitimate daughter of original killer Billy Loomis. She took antipsychotics to suppress hallucinations of Loomis, with 50-something Skeet Ulrich uncannily and ludicrously reprising his role as a 17-year-old. Its follow-up, Scream VI, ended in a museum filled with every killer’s Ghostface costume. The meta dialogue, previously confined to Randy, now extended to every character – 2022’s Scream wanted you to know how supremely clever it was. Its supposedly timely observations on the future of horror were about ​‘toxic fandom’ and ​‘Mary Sues’, ideas ripped wholesale from a 2016 Jezebel op-ed. While serviceable and sporadically entertaining, Scream had lost its defining qualities: its wit and prescience. 

Then, before she could complete her three film arc, Barrera was fired for her pro-Palestine social media posts. The original script for Scream 7 was completely overhauled and Jenna Ortega departed in support of Barrera (despite claims it was due to a scheduling conflict with her role in Wednesday). New director Christopher Landon also left following Barrera and Ortega’s exits. Though Sam wasn’t exactly the most riveting lead, it was important to see the character close out her story, and the treatment of Barrera ranks as one of the most insane acts of modern day Hollywood McCarthyism. It failed – she makes her Broadway debut later this month – but Spyglass Media Group revealed their true colours and showed exactly the kind of studio fans would be supporting. 

This leads us to the retooled Scream 7, with Neve Campbell parachuted back into the lead after skipping Scream VI over a pay dispute. Frankly, the cupboard has never been more bare. Scream 7 is a limp, shambling corpse of a horror movie, offering Lifetime movie cinematography and a revolving door of tragic green screen cameos. The Bettinelli-Olpin/Gillett films were undoubtedly flawed, but they at least had an imagination (and a star-making role for future Oscar winner Mikey Madison, who appeared in the 2022 reboot). Scream 7 exists solely as an in-universe justification for bringing Sidney back. Its killer – in an incoherent, franchise-worst reveal – tells Sidney that ​“a Ghostface attack doesn’t count if you’re not there.” This is the point we’re at in this franchise: the killer in Scream now has the same motivation as the studio behind Scream. Despite director Kevin Williamson claiming that the new film forgoes any meta commentary (“The rules thing, we don’t do that anymore,” says one character), that’s simply not correct. Scream 7 is a 114 minute film that exists in the shadow of Melissa Barrera’s firing and struggles to define itself any other way. 

It’s difficult to overstate how much of a gaping void sits at the heart of this franchise now. This won’t be the end of Scream – no doubt an eighth film will lumber its way into cinemas next year after the deeply depressing box office success of 7 – but a line has been crossed. No matter how creatively destitute and morally compromised this franchise has become, Ghostface will return! What used to excite now feels like a threat. The charm, the coolness, the sexiness and the genuine fear that this franchise once inspired has dried up entirely. It’s perhaps inevitable that a series built on wink-wink humour and plotlines would eventually start to cannibalise itself, but no one could have imagined it deteriorating like this. Then again, perhaps it’s darkly fitting that Craven’s baby has descended into Stab-esque slop without him, and that in order to enjoy a new Scream film in 2026, you must be utterly desensitised to real world violence.