Scream 7 - Still As Entertaining As Previous Installment of The Successful Slasher Movie Series

Once again a new slasher movie was released in the theater. As it is one of my favorite horror genre and sequel to the film series that I had seen from beginning, obviously I was interested in seeing this. So yesterday my wife and I went to our favorite cinema to watch it. Without further ado, here's more on the movie.

Brief Story Line

Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell - The Lincoln Lawyer TV series, The Craft etc) had been living a peaceful life in Pine Grove, married with the Police Chief Mark Evans (Joel McHale - Community TV series, Ted etc) and had 3 children, with the oldest already a teenager named Tatum (Isabel May - I Want You Back,1883 TV series etc). Due to her past experience, Sidney was always careful with Tatum's friends especially her boyfriend Ben (Sam Rechner - The Fabelmans, Heartbreak High TV series etc). When Sidney started receiving calls from people claiming to be Ghostface, she did not consider it until the killing really began. 

Meanwhile Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox - Friends TV series, Ace Ventura: Pet Detective etc) who heard about the killings by Ghostface, decided to go to Pine Grove together with the twins Mindy (Jasmin Savoy Brown - Yellowjackets TV series etc) and Chad (Mason Gooding - Moonshot etc) to cover the story. Mindy and Chad also suspected that the Ghostface would be someone in Tatum's life including Ben, Chloe (Celeste O'Connor - Madame Web, Freaky etc) and Lucas (Asa Germann - Gen V TV series etc). But everything became worse after Sidney and Gale tried to lure the killer to capture them.

So how would the story conclude? You could find out in this movie.

End of Brief Story Line

As expected from a slasher film from one of the most successful franchise (it's kind of obvious with this being the seventh installment), this was really entertaining for me and my wife. The movie still has the same formula but somehow we were not bored and did not mind at all cause it was always fun to try and deduce the real killer. Amazingly both of us did not get it right this time and all our previous guesses were wrong. Only after it was revealed did we realize that we have overlooked a bit of clue, although there was one thing that might be a bit far fetched and I do not think any one could have rightly guessed. 

Just like in previous installments, the film relied heavily on the gore killing that started with the voice of Ghostface. I was quite surprised that he was still voiced by Roger L. Jackson from the first Scream back in 1996. Anway this time the killing was still as violent and bloody as its predecessors which definitely suit the R rating and 21+ rating in Indonesia (there did not seem to be any scene censored here!). The special effects were very good and convincing but the best of it all was the sound effect. The studio we saw this had Dolby Atmos system which truly added the entertainment value and made the jump scare scenes really effective. My wife even jumped a bit during a random scene.

I also like the story in here as it shift its focus back to Sidney Prescott and casually added new characters and combining with people from past movies. Sidney's life story actually looked realistic and the returning of previous characters were done smoothly, but it was not without a flaw like the killer's motive and the non-existence of police. However it did not make us liked the movie less as the rest were enjoyable to see. It has a duration of 114 minutes which was enough to cover the whole plot. There was some brief mid end credit scene but no post end credit scene.

The film itself was directed by Kevin Williamson who wrote some Scream movies, I Know What You Did Last Summer, The Faculty and creator of various TV series like Dawson's Creek, The Vampire Diaries etc. He also wrote this together with Guy Busick (Final Destination: Blood Lines, Ready or Not etc). The movie has a pretty large ensemble cast that included some in addition to the ones I said above such as Anna Camp (Pitch Perfect 3, Bride Hard etc) as Lucas' mother and Sidney's neighbor Jessica, McKenna Grace (Five Nights at Freddy's 2, Ghostbusters: Afterlife etc) as one of Tatum's best friend Hannah, Ethan Embry (Gotham Knights TV series, All I Want for Christmas etc) and few others. There were even brief appearance of past movies actors like Matthew Lillard and others who I better let you see for yourself. 

Overall this was a slasher movie that my wife and I enjoyed. Though it has a formulaic story but its smart connection between the past and present movies characters plus fun of guessing the killer and the intensity & suspense while watching was definitely a positive side. Sadly critics were unimpressed with the film, but audience seemed to be more receptive and it's looking quite good in term of Box Office performance. Not sure yet if it would be able to surpass Scream VI or the original as it's too early to tell (it was just released this week in various countries including the US). So if you are fans of Scream movies, I think you would still be entertained like us. But if you only focus on the shortcomings, then you would not be able to enjoy this. The choice is yours.

Mike's movie moments rating: 4 out of 5 stars