By Krystof Gonzalez,
Staff Writer.
Scream 7 is the 7th installment of the Scream franchise. As often happens to series that drag on too long, it was not well received, getting only a 31% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The box office did quite well however, but of course this is never particularly reflective of a film’s quality so much as a reflection of consumers’ low standards.
There was no good reason for producers to make another Scream movie. Trying to substantiate a serious plot where viewers are expected to actually care and keep track of all the details within 7 movies over the course of 30 years is an extremely poor choice. While this is typical for most movie franchises, I did not consider Scream to be particularly bad, nor did many other viewers. They were jumpy, Scream 6 mostly unrelated to previous ones, except maybe Scream 5. The movies never came across related, and it seems this was true for the large jump from the 2023 installment to the current. It seems as though they have entirely lost the original sense of Scream and what it was, which was a satire of horror movies. Scream has become the butt of its own joke.
The plot of the film is mostly consistent between all of the different franchise movies. It does change when the zeitgeist shifts, typically in a humorous manner. In the original 90s film, it was about phones and how people were less connected as they didn’t keep track of each other as much since they could communicate over the phone. It was really the only gesture that permitted Scream to go on for as long of a franchise as it has, despite repeating the same plot again and again. The 2023 Scream film gave insight into home electronic security systems, location tracking apps and general smartphone use. The new installment doesn’t have much of this. It has some gestures to deepfaking and AI, but not in any meaningful way like past movies. “I thought the movie felt rather stale and confusing compared to the other Scream movies,” explained senior William Do.
It feels like a movie made by stockholders who want to scrounge any remaining bit of money they can out of this franchise, by word of mouth and the popularity of the series it worked, without any regard for the art of filmmaking.
