The Scream franchise is perhaps the great paradox of horror cinema, but there was always going to be a point where even the hallowed blade of Ghostface might grow a bit dull.
Since shocking audiences in 1996 with its Drew Barrymore fake-out opening and upending the entire genre as we know it, the Scream series has operated as horror’s wicked ombudsman. The first film revitalized a sagging genre, stuck in the mire of cheap slasher sequels and little imagination. Scream shook the industry with righteous force and gave the world one of the greatest horror films of all time.. and a map that one could trace for decades if they so wished.
The first sequel took a meta approach to what horror sequels even are, having its bloody cake and eating it too as both an inspired lampoon of the laziness that can overtake horror sequels and an actually great sequel to a horror classic.
Every new Scream movie after that was a risk taken and a risk paid off in varying degrees of success. Scream 3 is weird and flawed but admirably goofy and different compared to the others, and it’s still a Wes Craven movie. Scream 4 went about as well as a legacy sequel can go; Scream 5 went about as well as a legacy sequel post-Legacy Sequel (TM) could go. Scream 6 started to show some rust with a trip to New York, but it still worked.
The catch-22 to Scream is that it will always be an incredibly self-referential, self-aware horror franchise that is also a major horror franchise that makes a lot of money for its studio. The joys of being able to operate within the Scream world will always be balanced out with it being, at its core, what it makes fun of, a horror series that keeps going for monetary gain despite its best thrills and scares coming decades ago. This series has at least historically played into those expectations in satisfying, if not always flawless, ways.
As much as you don’t want to consider it, there was always the possibility Scream would start to get a little too close to Stab, the in-universe parody of Scream movies that helped keep future installments honest. There was always a point where Ghostface might trip on its own cloak, where the great horror parody becomes a parody of itself.
As much as you can’t ever take a Scream trailer that seriously with the series taking such fun in subverting your expectations, it’s hard not to be a little concerned at whatever in the world the trailer for Scream 7 is.
That’s it? Really? That’s it? If the marketing for Scream 7 included this trailer with different actors and ended it with Stab 12 or whatever, that would be a funny gag. This whole ordeal looks lifeless and taxed for reverence, a cash-grab legacy sequel where simply bringing back old characters and having Ghostface chasing them around in familiar confines is the selling point… which was the whole reason Craven made Scream in the first place, to challenge horror to evolve beyond that, to avoid the pratfalls that leaves the genre victim to its worst impulses.
Original Scream scribe Kevin Williamson co-wrote and directed this latest installment, so you have to hope and pray that a Barrymore-level fake-out is on the way. There almost has to be more to this than what’s being sold, even if the irony is that they’re stuck selling a bad-looking Scream movie right now to obfuscate the in-movie surprises.
However, is the fact that we’re able to suss through all of this before the movie even comes out kind of defeating the point? Would a different Scream 7 than what the trailer is selling really be that shocking if we can speculate the other shoe dropping? The great Matthew Lillard returning as the presumedly dead Stu Macher for this film amped up those fan juices, as how could it not? But does excitement (which I readily felt) for that kind of nostalgic pandering up front show your hand? Does it belie the entire point of the Scream series, or does the franchise’s track record of still finding a viable path forward despite all the gleeful contradictions assuage any concerns?
The “burn it all down” tagline makes you wonder if they’re going for a direct parody of the 2018 Halloween revival and subsequent films, as the parallels are uncomfortably similar. Williamson’s direct involvement gives you at least some hope that they’re holding their tricks close to the chest, even if we can technically anticipate the deception. However, there’s another grim reality to where they’re just doing a 2018 Halloween-style revival with Scream… which would have Randy Meeks rolling over in his grave. This is the one series that can’t break its own rules, and at least one trailer in, Scream 7 makes you a little antsy that jumping the shark might have found its way to Woodsboro.
Maybe this all just means Ghostface has us right where it wants us. We’re hoping, praying and almost banking on that being the case… because nobody wants to let these unknown calls go straight to voicemail.
This article originally appeared on For The Win: Scream 7 trailer looks a Stab movie
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