Following the departure of Melissa Barrera and Jenna Ortega after the last film, the seventh film in the Scream series attempts to go back to well one more time pulling Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) back into a new series of murders involving a Ghostface who may or may not be a character from the original film but is certainly using AI deepfakes for the inclusion of characters killed on screen in previous films.
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Scream Sunday takes us back to the world of Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) in the worst movie (at least so far) of the 30 year-old franchise. The characters feel far too long-in-the tooth at this point as the film goes extra-hard with Stab parody sequel cameos (featuring the likes of Anna Paquin, Kristen Bell, Shenae Grimes, and Lucy Hale) and new Ghostface killings (this time with the killer filming their own murders) while limping to an unsatisfying twist ending that ties in social media feeding narcissism and fame-seeking without delivering a satisfying conclusion.
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Scream Sunday takes us back to when the franchise first hit its rough patch. Rather than offer another sequel, Scream 3 attempts to reshape the three Scream films into a cohesive trilogy retroactively allowing for the film to dive into new rules to abide and reframing the events of the original Scream to reveal a hidden backstory for Maureen Prescott with ties to all the murders. The film brings Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) out of seclusion to the set of Stab 3 (a movie supposedly about the Woodsboro murders making you wonder how the previous two movies, also about those events, didn’t already cover all of this?) where a new Ghostface (Roger Jackson) is killing victims in part to draw Sidney out into the open.
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Hitting theaters less than a year after the original, Scream 2 has all the marks of a sequel including bigger, gorier, and more over-the-top kills all while shoehorning in even more notable faces and cameos as the franchise follows Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) to college where the release of the movie Stab (loosely based on the events of the first film) lead to a new Ghostface (Roger Jackson) hunting Sidney, Randy (Jamie Kennedy), Dewey (David Arquette), and Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox) along with new faces such a sorority girl Cici (Sarah Michelle Gellar) and Sid’s roommate Hallie (Elise Neal) and new beau Derek (Jerry O’Connell).
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The brainchild of Kevin Williamson, 1996’s Scream enjoyed playing with the concepts of a classic slasher flick often satirizing them when still using them to tell the story of Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) and her friends dealing with a serial killer in a Halloween costume murdering their way through their small California town. Director Wes Craven hits the right notes to stage and sell the concept for maximum effect while the characters often remark on the various aspects of horror movies culminating in the movie-obsessed Randy (Jamie Kennedy) summarizing rules which the franchise would live by for decades to come.
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