Reflections on Scream 7
A fan’s thoughts on a franchise I genuinely love
Spoiler Warning: This article discusses major plot points of Scream 7.
Opening Thought
Few horror franchises have stayed alive as long as Scream. And even fewer have managed to remain as culturally aware of themselves as this one.
For me, Scream is more than just a horror series. It’s something I grew up with. I must have been around eleven or twelve when the first film came out. I wasn’t allowed to see it in the cinema back then, but eventually I watched it anyway. I think I even remember seeing Scream 2 before the first one.
In the last weeks I went on a full Scream marathon. I watched all of them again — the first one twice — and I realised how much I genuinely love this franchise, especially the first two films.
What made the original films so special
The first Scream is still something special.
Not just because of the story, but because of the characters. Every single one of them had personality: Billy Loomis, Stu Macher, Randy, Sidney Prescott. They all felt unique.
Matthew Lillard’s performance as Stu Macher is still incredible. His energy, the strange body language, the unpredictability — it felt completely natural. Nothing about it looked “designed”. It just existed.
Another thing that made those early films work was pace.
If you look at the first film, very few people actually die. The tension builds slowly. The killer feels present throughout the entire story. And when the reveal finally comes, it feels earned.
My obsession with Stu Macher
During my recent marathon something funny happened.
I became slightly obsessed with the idea that Stu Macher might still be alive.
Especially after the fifth film, which returns to Stu’s house for the finale. I started thinking about it again: technically, we never really saw him die. A television falls on his head — but in horror movies that doesn’t necessarily mean the end.
And honestly, Matthew Lillard is such a great actor that the idea of him returning always felt exciting.
So when I heard that Scream 7 might somehow play with that idea, I was immediately intrigued.
The opening of Scream 7
The opening at Stu Macher’s house
Before the story moves to Sidney Prescott’s family, the film actually begins somewhere much more symbolic: Stu Macher’s house.
In the world of Scream 7, the house has turned into something like a strange horror attraction. Visitors can apparently book a night there, almost like an Airbnb for horror fans. Inside, the place has been turned into a kind of macabre museum. Marks on the floor show where the bodies once lay in the original film, Ghostface props are placed around the rooms, and even the infamous phone call is recreated as part of the experience.
It’s a clever and slightly disturbing idea: the place where the original massacre happened has become entertainment.
Of course, the joke quickly turns real. A Ghostface killer appears and murders the couple staying in the house before ultimately burning the building down.
The sequence is genuinely strong. It feels like a dark reflection of how the Scream franchise itself has become part of horror culture.
And honestly, it would have been even more powerful if the killer behind it had actually turned out to be Stu Macher himself. Unfortunately, the film never goes that far.
The next sequence: Sidney Prescott’s house
After this opening, the story shifts to Sidney Prescott’s family home.
The film takes a little time to establish her new life: she now has a husband and a daughter, and for a moment things feel almost calm. But the first warning sign already appears in a scene that clearly echoes the original Scream.
Sidney’s daughter’s boyfriend suddenly climbs in through the window — almost exactly like Billy Loomis did in the first film.
And that moment unfortunately feels forced. The actor seems to imitate Billy Loomis’ mannerisms, even repeating the small gesture with two fingers on the side of his head. In the original film, those details felt natural, almost accidental, as if they belonged to the character. Here it feels staged, as if the film is consciously recreating something iconic instead of letting a character behave in his own way.
Instead of feeling like a tribute, the scene comes across as strangely artificial.
The first killings in the new story
The first real killings involving newly introduced characters happen in a theatre rehearsal — and this sequence is genuinely strong.
Two young students are preparing a scene on stage. One of them is suspended in the air as part of the performance, playing some kind of flying princess or fairy, lifted by a stage rig while wearing a long costume. Meanwhile, another student is operating the lifting mechanism from a control station.
What makes the moment work so well is its simplicity. We don’t actually see the moment when the young man is killed — it happens offscreen, his throat silently cut (well not completely silent; we hear the juicy sound) while he is operating the controls. As a result, the girl remains suspended high above the stage, trapped in the air without understanding what has happened.
Then Ghostface appears.
The killer suddenly emerges from the darkness and attacks her from below, slashing upward and spilling her entrails — a moment that feels very much in line with the brutal tradition of the original Scream opening scene. It’s shocking, theatrical, and strangely fitting for the setting.
From there the story quickly connects back to Sidney Prescott. She arrives just moments after the murders and briefly sees Ghostface herself, immediately understanding what is happening.
The attack at Sidney’s house
What follows is one of the film’s strongest sequences.
Sidney returns home with her husband and daughter, believing the immediate danger might already be over. The police have already searched the house. But the killer has been hiding in the attic the entire time.
When Ghostface finally appears, the fight that follows is intense and surprisingly physical. The sound design, the impact of the blows, and the choreography of the struggle all feel convincing. Sidney’s husband fights back hard, and the confrontation feels chaotic and dangerous rather than stylized.
Eventually Sidney escapes with her daughter into the panic room while her husband lies unconscious. At one point Sidney and her daughter have to crawl through the hidden space inside the walls to move safely through the house. Of course it is not safe. Ghostface senses them and stabs through the walls missing them by inches.
Those moments are genuinely tense and very well executed.
The only element that feels slightly convenient is the way the scene ends: just as the killer gets onto the street, Gale Weathers happens to arrive in her car and runs him over. It resolves the immediate threat almost too neatly.
And in hindsight it also contributes to a larger issue in the film — the sense that Ghostface killers appear and disappear too easily. One is eliminated early, while others are revealed later, which slightly weakens the impact of the killer figure itself.
Still, as an opening stretch for the film, these sequences are powerful and genuinely entertaining.
The problem of “killer inflation”
Since the film introduces a Ghostface killer very early, and that killer is eliminated within the first twenty minutes or so. Then later there are two more killers. Scream 6 already had three main killers and one copycat Ghostface killer (plus his copycat Ghostface killer friend dead in the fridge) in the starting scene.
At this point the franchise has a kind of killer inflation problem.
When Ghostface appears too often, or when multiple killers appear and disappear quickly, the figure itself starts to lose its mythic quality. It starts to feel less threatening. (BTW: did you also have the impression that the killer reveal in Scream 6 felt a bit like Chris Pratt being flanked by his velociraptors?)
In the early films Ghostface felt like a presence. Now it sometimes feels like a rotating costume. The movie struggles with its root and tries to come up with rather random links that lead back to its origine. One more reason why Stu would have been such a great option. The character would ground the entire story automatically giving the killer a substantial motive without the need to explain anything in the reveal.
Pacing: modern films rush too much
One of the biggest issues in modern filmmaking — and Scream 7 unfortunately suffers from it as well — is pacing.
Everything moves too fast. Or let’s say “jumps”.
Characters are introduced and then killed almost immediately. Entire groups of people disappear in one chaotic massacre instead of deaths being spaced out across the story.
The film jumps from setup to finale very quickly.
Compare that with something like Jurassic Park. Spielberg famously builds the T-Rex scene step by step: the empty enclosure, the goat, the vibrating water glass, the breaking fence, and finally the dinosaur.
That slow construction of tension is something many modern films have lost.
Character problems and casting
Another issue lies in some of the casting and character work.
In the early films the actors had strong individuality. You could recognise their personality even in the way they stood or moved.
Modern entries often rely heavily on close-ups. Actors perform mainly through facial expression, while physical presence and body language become less important.
But character is often expressed through movement, posture and energy — not just through faces.
When that disappears, the characters start to feel interchangeable.
The final reveal
Unfortunately the biggest weakness appears at the end.
The killers revealed in Scream 7 have almost no meaningful presence earlier in the story. They appear only briefly, without enough interaction or emotional connection to Sidney or the main characters. And it is not that one has to show off and explain why he did this or that. It is about the felt connection Sidney has to the Killers. And that happens with interaction throughout the film.
Because of that, the reveal feels less satisfying.
One of the pleasures of Scream is trying to guess who the killer might be. But if the characters are barely present in the narrative, the mystery loses its emotional weight.
The Stu Macher tease
The most frustrating element, however, is the way the film teases Stu Macher.
The story repeatedly references him through videos and recordings, clearly playing with the audience’s expectations. Matthew Lillard’s presence hovers over the film.
But ultimately he never truly returns.
For fans who were hoping for that moment, the film almost feels like it builds anticipation deliberately — only to step away from it.
And that’s a shame, because if the franchise ever wanted to bring him back, this was probably the perfect opportunity. If there is gonna be a Scream 8 and if the Killer then really happens to be Stu, and I still would really love that to happen, it somehow wouldn’t feel right anymore. The chance was now.
Final reflection
Despite all of these criticisms, I still enjoyed watching Scream 7.
The atmosphere works. The fights are intense. Some sequences are genuinely well directed.
But the film also shows a broader issue that many modern franchises face: the loss of patience in storytelling.
The original Scream films built tension slowly. They allowed characters to breathe. They let the killer feel present throughout the narrative.
And maybe that’s the real lesson here.
Sometimes horror works best when it takes its time. And some depth also on the expendable characters.