The mix of yuks and the yucks in “Scream 7” aren’t as tasty as other great tastes that taste great together, but after 30 years this seemingly unkillable series hasn’t entirely bled out. That’s about the only genuine surprise in this latest addition to a franchise that started in 1996 and has been regularly exhumed, refurbished and exploited, leading to hits and misses as well as a TV spinoff, spoofs (“Scary Movie”), conventions, merchandise and scholarly deep dives. In genre terms, the “Scream” movies are commonly classed as slasher movies, even if the franchise’s apparent indestructibility aligns it with other cinema undead.
“Scream 7” arrives amid a light fog of nostalgia (much like its opening scene) simply because it serves as somewhat of a reunion for some of the cycle’s more frequent participants, including the writer Kevin Williamson and the star Neve Campbell. (Both skipped No. 6, though his name was still attached.) Williamson also directed this movie (he shares a writing credit with Guy Busick), his first time in that capacity, and he’s brought along some other friends, notably Courteney Cox, Matthew Lillard and David Arquette. They’re joined by the customary support team of fresh and familiar faces, who together fulfill the usual franchise duties by cracking wise, arousing suspicion and dying in an elaborately lurid fashion.
A large part of the ghoulishly ticklish fun of the first “Scream” was how nimbly the director Wes Craven balanced genuine scares with the self-reflexive wit of Williamson’s inaugural screenplay. By the time that the first movie opened, the slasher genre seemed to have entered its senescence, its glory gory days of the 1970s safely past. A new subgenre era started soon after Drew Barrymore’s character answers the phone, and a creepy-sounding stranger asks her what her favorite scary movie is. She might be alone in a large, isolated house with big picture windows, but she’s a modern woman and a fan, and so she rattles off a few films, Craven’s “A Nightmare on Elm Street” included. Slam, bam, goodbye ma’am.
Campbell’s character, Sidney Prescott, turned out to be made of tougher stuff and managed to successfully, if temporarily, vanquish the creepy stranger, Ghostface. One of the genre’s more enduringly iconic masked villains, Ghostface carved out his place in horror’s annals with an apparently endless supply of well-honed knives, a black robe and an eerie white mask that evokes Edvard Munch’s 1893 Expressionist painting, “The Scream.” It’s hard to keep a good ghoul down, so it’s no surprise that Ghostface is back for both more slaughter and more jousting with the redoubtable Sidney in “Scream 7,” which, at once, revisits the franchise’s greatest hits, tries to re-energize its formula and suggest possible future additions.
The results are, by turns, amusing and lightly scary, though never truly surprising. Sidney has settled down in Pine Grove, a generic small town so quaintly old-fashioned that it even has movie theater on its main drag. (There’s a horror flick on the marquee, “Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” a hat tip to another slasher series.) At least outwardly, Sidney seems to have a happy life, complete with a husband, Mark (Joel McHale), and a teenage daughter, Tatum (Isabel May). Two other children are conveniently away visiting a relative, presumably because they’re too young to meet the kind of entertainingly disgusting death that this series requires. Tatum’s circle of friends, on the other hand, easily meet the slasher age requirement.
After an overlong opener that’s heavy on the meta-madness, Williamson settles into a groove with a story that riffs on the first film while gleefully amping its ick factor. The plasma flows more easily than the movie does amid the unnerving noises, shadowy rooms, pop-culture nods, self-aware winks and disposable characters, some of whom have apparently never watched a single horror movie or have ignored (naughty, naughty) the genre’s important lifesaving lessons. The youngsters are generally charming, though much of this movie’s enjoyment comes from just watching Campbell and Cox sync up like B-movie versions of Joan Crawford and Eve Arden in “Mildred Pierce,” just a couple of dames sitting and running down memory lane with laughs, shrieks and the kind of skill set that every woman should have.
Scream 7 Rated R for slasher movie horror. Running time: 1 hour 54 minutes. In theaters.
Manohla Dargis is the chief film critic for The Times.
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