Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: The Scream movies stopped sucking for a while! After Scream 3‘s major letdown I avoided the series for years until critics’ morale improved. Once I caught up, I loved the fourth one’s All About Eve ending (costarring future Best Actress Mikey Madison!) and thought the fifth one was the best one since the original. The last one made a few mistakes but ranks fairly near the not-bad second one on my list.

The creative slump returns with a vengeance in the inevitable product that is Scream 7. Studio execs love durable IPs and most studios seem to be making nothing but horror flicks nowadays. After the original plans for this one collapsed and most participants ran away or were fired, the “Billy Loomis’ Haunted Daughter” trilogy was ditched unfinished and the buck was passed back to series creator Kevin Williamson to save the day and the profits. In conjunction with the writers of the last two, Guy Busick and James Vanderbilt (or maybe just cannibalizing whatever scrap papers they left behind), Williamson ran it to the finish line and decided it was time to direct a feature film for his second time ever. His first try 26 years ago, Teaching Mrs. Tingle, is faintly remembered as the answer to the trivia question “What horror film had to change its name because of Columbine?” and not for much else.

(Before we dive in: mild spoilers ahead. I’m pretty sure anyone worried about spoilers already saw it opening weekend and the second weekend’s box office receipts will plummet a good 80% or so. But here’s a courtesy pause anyway, just in case.)

The Gist: Neve Campbell is back, and this time, she’s better paid! After sitting out the sixth one due to attempted salary lowballing, Paramount realized they were backed into a corner and reopened their billion-dollar coffers to OG Heroine Sidney Prescott. We learn she’s still alive and has a husband (TV’s Joel McHale!) and a 17-year-old daughter (Isabel May from Paramount+’s 1883 and 1923), whom she named Tatum after Rose McGowan’s memorably fierce yet doomed character in the very first one. Sidney hoped her kid would grow up just as tough, but apparently never showed her how to be tough. Despite surviving five consecutive slasher flicks and racking up one of the all-time highest self-defense body counts for a Final Girl, Sidney did not go full-on paranoiac doomsday-prepper in an underground bunker, did not move to the middle of Montana a hundred miles from the nearest shadowy corner, didn’t qualify for basic witness protection, and definitely didn’t give Tatum any practical lessons from the Sarah Conner School of Weapons Training.

Instead, Sidney shielded her from all that, moved to a cozy Indiana town, and spent medium bucks, possibly also using a coupon, to install an ordinary security system and panic-room hallways only slightly more defensible than a pillow fort. Sidney believes she’s earned a Happily Ever After, which is understandable since she’s never bothered watching any of the Stab series-within-this-series based on her repetitive experiences, as published in the tell-all book by longtime nemesister Gale Weathers (Courtney Cox, still alive but battle-damaged). It’s only a matter of time before the specter of Ghostface tracks her down yet again, and she’s once again receiving ominous calls from one, two, or maybe as many as six thousand different Ghostfaces teamed up and coming for her yet again, all still using the same Roger L. Jackson filter.

But even with Williamson back, everyone’s all out of horror-flick meta commentary, so they settle into the series’ other, lesser motif: Ghostface adopting society’s latest toys to upgrade their kill-spree arsenal. This time the cutting-edge tech used alongside the usual array of literal cutting edges is…AI deepfake videos! Our latest evildoer(s) know how to use Pixar-level programs to recast their FaceTime calls with the face and voice of none other than Billy Loomis’ equally dead BFF Stu Macher. So now Ghostface is wearing the CG skin of Matthew Lillard, beloved idol of millions, whose distinctive Shaggy voice could be heard in one of the trailers! But is it a deepfake? What if the wild rumors that Stu secretly survived having his head smashed in with a TV — rumors that no one ever mentioned till right about now — are actually true and he’s making a comeback?

The familiar faces: Among the suspects who’re either colluding with Stu or using his reanimated corpse as their avatar, who could be the new Ghostfaces? Is it:

• The aforementioned McHale, whom I last saw in Stargirl as a resurrected superhero who was more than he seemed, but who here is Sid’s husband and the town sheriff? As if either role guarantees his innocence?
• Sam Rechner (The Fabelmans‘ lead bully) as Tatum’s boyfriend, whom of course Sid doesn’t trust because her traumas have created in her mind the generalization All Boyfriends Are Evil?
• Mckenna Grace (the recent Ghostbusters sequels) and Madame Web survivor Celeste O’Connor as Tatum’s friends and drama-club classmates?
• Anna Camp (the Pitch Perfect trilogy) as Sidney’s happy next-door neighbor Jessica?
• Asa Germann (Gen V‘s super-strong schizophrenic Sam) as Jessica’s socially awkward, occasionally creepy son who’s also in drama club?
• Veep-creep Tim Simons as the weird drama-club teacher?
• ’90s everyman Ethan Embry (Empire Records, Once Upon a Time, That Thing You Do!) as a random employee at the local sanitarium who’s teeming with exposition?
• Amy Pemberton (Legends of Tomorrow) as one of McHale’s deputies?
• Live with Kelly and Mark cohost Mark Consuelos as a local newsman who’s starstruck when Gale inevitably shows up in town?
• Mason Gooding and The Leftovers‘ Jasmin Savoy Brown, whose Meeks-Martin twins are the only other returnees from the last two Screams and who’ve gotten so cocky that they’re working for Gale as her independent news crew?

…or a few other faces from the past who pop in later, to varying degrees of disbelief and screen time? Or maybe the real homage here is The Truman Show and this is all one big elaborate hoax where everyonein town is collaborating on Sid’s death? Man, that would’ve been a way crazier and better movie.

The Impressions: The mandatory prologue takes us back to Stu Macher’s old house (last seen at the end of the fifth one), where temporary guests Michelle Randolph (Paramount+’s 1923 and Landman) and YouTuber Jimmy Tatro find it’s been turned into a murder-house museum, though we never learn the latest owner’s identity. Once that running gag lures us into a comfy state, what follows is…well, not much different from some of the past chapters: another circle of probably doomed friends, more of Jackson’s snarls, a big red-herring sequence, and paranoia run amuck. Every group gathering is a huge mistake, whether at the school auditorium’s backstage or at the local bar. I’m not one for craving “epic kills”, though Williamson puts far more visual gusto into one eerily backlit school-grounds casualty than the entire rest of the film combined.

Making the mother/daughter relationship the film’s core seems a solid idea — the passing of the torch from one constantly threatened survivor to the next, a sort-of salute to Final Girl Power. That works if we accept the premise that there’ll always be new Ghostfaces coming after them for the rest of their lives, and that into every generation shall be born a Ghostface Slayer. But their supposed rapport is wispy and strained throughout — Sid apparently raised Tatum in a bubble and taught her nothing. Tatum lives as blithely as any given teen, isn’t even convinced her mom’s been telling the truth about her dark past all these years, exhibits not even rudimentary self-defense skills. Their disconnection yields one of the most unintentionally funny bits, when Sid — who’s blocks away when Ghostface corners Tatum down at the coffeeshop — inexplicably leaves her car behind, starts running to the scene, stops in her tracks, calls Tatum, tries to talk her through her next steps, and has to explain to her how the safety switch on a gun works while Ghostface bangs around outside and Sid continues not running to her rescue. I had to wonder if Sid survived those first five films only with a little help from her friends and stubbornly learned nothing herself except “ALWAYS SHOOT THEM IN THE HEAD”, which, again, only works for people who can shoot.

So Scream: The Next Generation isn’t off to the best start, despite strong accompaniment from Cox (who demonstrates how Gale’s wild fight scene in the sixth one took a toll on her and hasn’t fully recuperated) and Lillard, real or not, possibly reinvigorated by that whole Tarantino tempest. As always it comes down to one last villain speech at the end, which would’ve come off as one of the most ludicrous reveals yet even if I hadn’t already guessed two-thirds of the total solution earlier. For you kids at home who’re still new to watching movie whodunits, a couple of tips:

1. Whenever a character briefly alludes to a dark event in their past but then the film swiftly cuts them off before anyone can ask for more details, that past might just be revealed later with unhappy consequences.
2. If you find yourself asking, “Why is that actor I’ve seen in a dozen other, bigger roles only popping in for a single scene?”, maybe expect to see them again.

…and the bits I didn’t guess weren’t exactly mind-blowing, resting on a lilt (too slight to call it a “twist”) that’s probably been done in some past Hallmark film. We get none of the snarky insights that the best Scream installments gave us, not even the trademark scene of someone listing “rules” — in fact, Williamson pointedly nods toward that tradition and then jokingly shuts it down as if we’re all tired of “rules”. THOSE WERE ALWAYS THE BEST PARTS, even when I disagreed with them. (Like the silly one about “requels” — but at least they tried.) Instead all we get is…just another slasher film. Call it I Know What You Did Last Sequel. I bet at least three of the Stab sequels were better than this.

The end credits? To answer the burning question that MCC is always happy to verify: yes, there is indeed a scene during the Scream 7 end credits. For those who tuned out prematurely and really want to know, and didn’t already click elsewhere…

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[…insert space for courtesy spoiler alert in case anyone needs to abandon ship…]

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…while the police department is still picking up the pieces after the final showdown at the Evans house, the Meeks-Martin twins try filming their own news segment without Gale, with wacky results. Basically all they manage is a blooper reel, but it’s one of the film’s few funny bits that I laughed with rather than at.