Like sands through the hourglass, so are the screams of our lives. The arrival of the soapy “Scream 7” is a rare example of a 1990s cultural artifact that has survived, though its pulse is weakening.
Neve Campbell in ‘Scream 7.’
The main tension of the new entry is the you’re-not-the-boss-of-me squabbling between free-spirited 17-year-old Tatum Evans (Isabel May of the series “1883”) and middle-aged mom Sidney Prescott-Evans (Neve Campbell). Sidney, back home in Woodsboro, Calif., where the series began, has more cause than most people to be overprotective, given that she keeps attracting loony stalkers, and she keeps a pistol at the café where she works. Lucky for her, her husband, Mark, is a cop; unlucky for her, he’s played by Joel McHale. When the killer in the Ghostface mask starts yet another rampage, Mr. McHale doesn’t come across as much of a match for even the least imaginative of psycho killers.
Kevin Williamson, who created the franchise with his script for the first “Scream,” cleverly directed by Wes Craven, went on to create the angsty teen TV soap “Dawson’s Creek.” Now he is returning to direct a “Scream” entry for the first time; his only previous credit as a movie director is “Teaching Mrs. Tingle,” a 1999 flop. That Mr. Williamson’s directorial skills have seemingly attracted little demand is understandable.
The film exhibits no sense of how to stage a surprise, settling instead for hackish tricks like having a character nonsensically appear in, say, the middle of a deserted street as though arriving via drone. Despite being eager to remind us how savvy it is about horror clichés, “Scream 7” indulges lavishly in them; the animatronic figure with the butcher knife that appears in a prologue is merely the first of many mechanical, factory-built elements.
The major twist is to have characters employ deepfake technology on video calls. While relatively novel, that wrinkle isn’t much of a factor in the chaos. It doesn’t much matter who takes up the mask, and the slaughter scenes are routine. If your mouth opens wide during any of the supposedly terrifying interludes, it’s more likely to form a yawn than a cry. The many loud blasts of urgent musical cues on the soundtrack have a desperate feel; been there, run from that.
There have been episodes in the saga when the franchise’s cast members have been so blasé about being caught up in a stabbing spree that seeing them duly exsanguinated feels more like justice than horror. “Scream VI,” three years ago, was a notable example. This time, though, the more salient problem is that everyone is hopelessly generic, from the primary target to the eventually unmasked killers, who in the final act give a loopy explanation of their dark deeds that amounts to “What did you expect? We’re crazy.”
The teen protagonist, Tatum (named after one of Ghostface’s first victims), is so bland, and portrayed so listlessly by Ms. May, that she is a void where the story’s heart should be. (The much more charismatic Mckenna Grace, who appears briefly as a fellow high-school student, showed real star power in last year’s “Regretting You,” and casting her as the lead would have made more sense.)
The established characters don’t add much either. Ms. Campbell, never the most beguiling actress, has appeared in every entry except “Scream VI” and gives another perfunctory performance. She is joined, yet again, by Courteney Cox’s intrusive newscaster, Gale Weathers, who is in all seven films and is meant to serve as a satiric commentary on journalism’s obsession with blood and gore. Like every other detail here, that implicit complaint is dusty and ossified, and Mr. Williamson’s formerly wised-up dialogue has been supplanted by a grinding earnestness, with everyone constantly asking about one another’s feelings.
By refocusing on Ms. Campbell and other performers Gen X has followed for a long time, the franchise is betting that the audience will feel an emotional bond with old friends. But you can trundle out familiar faces only so many times before the series starts to feel like a cheesy nostalgia act, a variety show that, in lieu of song-and-dance numbers, features heads impaled on pointy objects. If there’s a single witty idea in the entire two-hour slog, I missed it.
