So I have been under the weather over the last few weeks, and I chose to stay at home this past Saturday. I had intended on going to the new Scream 7 film that came out, but I wanted to take the time to try and get better. Today, I was able to go to the film I missed last weekend.

I am going to say that I had heard a lot of negatives directed toward Scream 7 and so my expectations going into the theater today were rather low. I do think that it helped having such low expectations, because I did not hate watching this. Don’t get me wrong, it is a dumb movie and I would not recommend it. I just didn’t find it to be a horrible watch. It was certainly better than the Psycho Killer film from a few weeks ago. That is not saying much, though.

We are back with Sydney Prescott, now with the last name of Evans, and the film took every opportunity to comment on Scream 6 being the film (or the Ghostface killings) where Sydney did not get involved. The meta aspect of this fits in a Scream franchise, but it feels odd that the implication was that the last movie sucked because Sydney wasn’t there.

A new Ghostface finds his/her way to the town where Sydney was living and began killing off easily replaceable characters who have little to no characterization. For example, Asa Germann, who played Sam on Gen V, was only ever referred to as the “weird one.” There is no reason or explanation. That was his sole character trait. McKenna Grace was here too, but all I know about her character was that she was the blonde friend who was in the school play. There were actually some good actors in this film, but they were not given anything worthy to do.

We knew from casting news that Matthew Lillard was returning to the film as Stu Macher, who had been killed in the first Scream film. There was a lot of speculation about whether he was returning as the same character, but that is one of the most obvious bit in the film. No spoilers, but you’ll get it.

Then speaking of no spoilers, the ending reveal is perhaps the dumbest part of the entire movie. There are some cameos in this movie that are just terrible and make zero sense.

It felt like this movie played only on nostalgia without having any original thoughts of its own.

As I said, I didn’t hate this, but I am only a guy who has liked the Scream franchise. I think that if you are a big fan of Scream and its sequels, you are going to hate this. If you just want a dumb time at the movies, set your expectations low and you may not hate yourself for watching it.

2 stars