The heroine doesn’t cry in ‘Scream 7’

Ghostface will never be the same. Neither will the Scream movie franchise. Paramount’s Scream 7 is a fun, gory and typical teenager horror film. There are a lot of screaming, some jump scare moments and a lot of silliness to make this franchise installment entertaining.  

What makes the movie’s engine go is Neve Campbell, who plays the mom/wife baddie Sidney Prescott with an attitude.

Prescott will do anything to protect her family and when wind catches up to her that some problems might be lingering from her old encounters with Ghostface, that’s when her quiet community life that she’s embraced becomes a slaughterhouse. 

The thrill ride of “Scream 7” begins and ends with Ghostface, the relentless tormentor of Prescott. With years gone by and having relocated to another small town, Prescott is in a good place in her life. 

She’s a mom. She’s a wife to a cop. She is a small business owner with a teenage daughter whose somewhat rebellious spirit reminds Prescott of herself. Her terror-filled past is behind her and in the rearview mirror. Or she thinks.  

Prescott feels as if the only thing that she has to worry about these days is making an expresso drink and having to make sure her teenage daughter’s boyfriend is not sneaking around into her bedroom without permission. 

This parental endeavor turns out to the least of her worries. As the film develops, Prescott and daughter Tatum (Isabel May) are going through a typical tug-o-war crisis between teenager and parent when the killings begin. 

Prescott (Campbell) began getting what she thinks are prank calls meant to scare her and intimidate her family. She doesn’t really take the calls seriously at first and brushes them off as nothing more than annoying pranksters trying to get their kicks in scaring her. 

However, when the bodies begin to pile up, Prescott turns on her Ghostface radar and explores options to protect herself and her family from harm. 

When the film’s menace makes it clear to Prescott that he wants to take out Tatum, the roller-coaster ride of the hide-and-seek murder trail left behind by Ghostface becomes monumental and troubling to Prescott. 

When she comes to her senses and realizes that all these weird calls she’s been getting from this walking freakshow is real, Prescott does her best to pull out the stops to halt the mayhem. 

Too late. With Ghostface going all-in on the killings and scaring the heck out of the town’s teenager population, Prescott is left with no choice but to rid herself and everyone around her of this menace once and for all.  

She gets some relief from longtime foil  and crime reporter Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox), who shows up on the scene at the right time at the right moment with her learning-on-the-job crew. 

Campbell and Cox are longtime fixtures in the franchise.Their appearances in this film anchors the project. When Campbell and Cox are on the screen together, the energy of Scream 7 picks up considerably.  

The synergy between Prescott and Weather is what makes the movie succeed when it easily could have failed its objective.

While the premise of the movie is pretty much a continuation of the same from the previous six Scream movies (lots of blood and gore), there is some comedic relief and enough humorous one-liners to offset the bloodbath. 

The thing about Scream 7 is that the movie itself doesn’t really present the obvious scary feeling that a horror film should bring. At times, the movie feels a bit dated as if it was something of a relic coming from the 1980s or 1990s. That’s probably why you can’t take it too seriously. 

One of the best aspects of Scream 7, though, is the strength of the women characters. Prescott (Campbell), Weathers (Cox) and Tatum (May) all exhibit different levels of badass moments throughout the film. These three women kick butt and are take names with them. 

You will not find any hapless heroine in Scream 7. Even the victims of Ghostface go down swinging. There are plenty of times in Scream 7 where Ghostface is getting the crap knocked out of him, diminishing his aura of invincibility. By the time that this film wraps up, Ghostface is wishing the ending would have come sooner rather than later. 

Cover Art/Lead Photo. Neve Campbell , left, and Courteney Cox star in Paramount Pictures and Spyglass Media Group’s “Scream 7.” | © 2026 PARAMOUNT PICTURES. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.