HORROR-THON 2026 • NO EXIT
7/10
DIRECTOR: Kevin Williamson
STARRING: Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, Isabel May
RELEASED: 2026
RUNTIME: 1 hr, 54 minutes
WATCH ON: Paramount+, Amazon, Apple TV, Fandango at Home
SCARE LEVEL: Medium
ANSWERING UNKNOWN NUMBERS: Still a hard pass.
Sidney Prescott finally has the life she always wanted. A café, a husband who’s the police chief, a quiet little town, and a teenage daughter who rolls her eyes at her. Thirty years after the first Scream, the phone rings again.
Two years after Scream VI, Sidney is living in Pine Grove under a careful, quiet routine. She’s buried her past as deep as she can. Her 17-year-old daughter, Tatum, knows only some of it.
Then Ghostface shows up in Pine Grove, and this time the target is Tatum. Gale comes back to town. Old names start resurfacing, and Sidney has to decide whether to run or finally finish this.
MY HUMBLE OPINION
Kevin Williamson, who wrote the original, directed this one himself. He brought Sidney back after she sat out Scream VI, and it’s very good to have Sidney back where she belongs.
Despite that is very, very hard to come to terms with Sidney having a 17-year-old daughter, Neve Campbell, and Isabel May are a mother-daughter duo that works. Naming her daughter Tatum after the friend she lost in the first movie is a nice touch. It’s also a lot to put on a teenager.
The kills in this movie are some of the most brutal in the franchise, including one involving a beer tap and another with a high school stage.
After 7 of these, it feels slightly tired. The new characters are basically name tags; the motive is once again pretty weak. The franchise that made fun of lazy sequels nearly turns into one itself. The callbacks got me because, of course, I loved the 1996 original. Nostalgia is one powerful drug.
And it’s the year’s second movie about a final girl who became a mom and can’t escape her past.
A FUN FACT FOR YOUR NEXT DINNER PARTY:
The Spring Hill Estate mansion in Tomales, California, which serves as the Macher residence in the climactic scenes of the 1996 original and 2022 installment, is available to book for guided tours, overnight stays, and weddings.