MAJOR SPOILERS are hiding behind every corner and closet door below, so BE WARNED if you haven’t yet watched Scream 7 in its entirety.
The first big whodunnit on the 2026 movie schedule has arrived, though the deaths at the heart of Scream 7 were a tad too morbid for the likes of highbrow detectives like Benoit Blanc or Hercule Poirot. No, these were the kinds of ghastly murders only a Scream Queen Final Girl could possibly stop, so it’s a good thing Scream franchise vet Neve Campbell made her return as Sydney, with O.G. screenwriter Kevin Williamson taking the reins as writer and director.
More On Scream 7
As it goes with every Scream movie, there are killers to unmask, victims to talk about, and returning stars to point out. This is perhaps the first time I feel like this franchise sets up a good spinoff route, though, so I’ll get into that as well.
Who Is Scream 7’s Killer(s), And Why Were They Targeting Sydney?
For the majority of Scream 7‘s runtime, viewers are led to the baffling belief that Stu Macher survived the TV-to-the-head death in the original film, and that he’s now hellbent on torturing Sydney anew. The fact that Matthew Lillard’s secretive return was well-documented made it seem strangely plausible, as did Ghostface burning the murder-honoring Macher home down in the opening sequence.
Alas, Stu has indeed been gone a long time, and Scream 7 delivers a whopping THREE killers for the characters to run from.
- Karl Gibbs (Kraig Dane): a woman-murdering mental patient who is coerced into murdering others as Ghostface
- Jessica Bowden (Anna Camp): Sydney’s seemingly tight-knit neighbor, as well as the mother (and murderer) of the true-crime-loving Lucas
- Marco Davis (Ethan Embry): an orderly at the Fallbrook Psychiatric Hospital who meets Jessica and ropes Karl into the plans (and whose gnarly hairline was an instant giveaway that he’s guilty of something awful)
Karl was killed around the end of the first act, leaving the mystery open until the late-game villain reveal, during which audiences got to hear a lengthy explanation from Jessica Bowden about why she put so much effort into ruining Sydney’s life.
Jessica suffered for years at the hands of an abusive husband but, after reading Sydney Prescott’s autobiography (whose promotional tour was at the center of Scream 4), was inspired to also step up and take control of her existence, albeit in the form of murdering her hateful hubby. But when Sydney wasn’t around for the New York killings that her son was most recently obsessing over, Jessica began to think her Final Girl worship was misguided.
Jessica landed herself at Fallbrook Psychiatric Hospital in Pine Grove, Indiana after learning that Sydney was living there. (It’s not entirely clear how she did all this with Lucas in her care.) Jessica then managed to secure the house next to Sydney’s, where she was able to enact her grand plan of setting Sydney’s daughter Tatum up as a NEW Final Girl.
Kevin Williamson talked about going less meta and self-referential on the whole with Scream 7, so that the focus could be more squarely put on Sydney’s legacy, further informing Jessica’s motivations from a creative standpoint. The sequel’s themes also leaned heavily into nostalgia as a driving force, as well as generational trauma, with Isabel May’s Tatum getting her survival skills constantly tested throughout the movie.
For their parts, both Marco and Karl seem to have just gone along with Jessica’s flow as opposed to having any directly personal vendettas involving Sydney’s family. Because of that, this was one of the worst killer reveals of the franchise in my eyes.
All Those Scream Franchise Cameos, Explained
Anyone hoping for Stu Macher’s miraculous survival was in for disappointment, as it became clear as the movie went on that the character making video calls to Sydney wasn’t actually one-half of the first Ghostface killings, but rather the result of AI deepfake trickery. To be sure, Matthew Lillard’s unhinged performance was everything this movie needed, so even if the explanation didn’t lead to him showing up in the flesh, it was a win all the same.
The digital manipulation was crafted by ol’ Marco, who apparently had a background in computers and IT work that helped him absolutely NAIL what Stu would both look and sound like, without any forms of digital artifacts or other evidence of fakery. (And yet was still working in that hospital instead of doing anything in the tech sector, okay, sure.)
Unsurprisingly, this is also how the rest of Scream 7’s cameos came to be. Just before the big reveals, Sydney watched a bizarrely staged video that included a final performance from Matthew Lillard, as well as a pair of fellow former Ghostfaces in Laurie Metcalf’s Nancy Loomis and Scott Foley’s Roman Bridger. The final callback was David Arquette’s Dewey Riley tugging at Sydney’s heartstrings and drawing out more of her fury.
A List Of Scream 7’s Victims
- Scott (Jimmy Tatro) – stabbed multiple times, burned in house fire
- Hannah Turman (McKenna Grace) – Sliced open and gutted as she swung from ropes during theater rehearsal at school
- Karl Gibbs – hit by Gale’s car
- Chloe Parker (Celeste O’Conner) – neck impaled by broken bar glasses after Ghostface slid her across the bartop and onto the ground
- Lucas Bowden (Asa Germann) – stabbed and head impaled on beer tap, with bloody suds spurting from his mouth
- Ben Brown (Sam Rechner) – stabbed various times through the chest and other areas
- Marco Davis (Ethan Embry) – shot through the head by Sydney
- Jessica Bowden (Anna Camp) – face is literally shot off by Sydney and Tatum
The Mid-Credits Sequence Sets Up The Spinoff I Want To See Instead Of Scream 8
With Sydney’s legacy still intact, along with the safety of her (injured) husband and three children, the Scream movies don’t really need to continue going, even though it would likely take armageddon itself to stop Paramount from producing more sequels. That said, I do think Scream 7 sets up a magnificent route to a spinoff led by Jasmin Savoy Brown’s and Mason Gooding’s Mindy and Chad Meeks-Martin, respectively.
We’re talking about a different kind of legacy here, with Mindy primed to follow in the investigative journalist footsteps of Courteney Cox‘s Gale Weathers, with Chad as the dutiful cameraman. (Not necessarily the safest job to have in these movies, but still.) The movie didn’t hinge entirely on the twins trying to take that mantle, but the ending and mid-credits sequence do indeed lay the groundwork for a spinoff feature.
Instead of having yet another Ghostface return, a Scream offshoot could follow Mindy and Chad (and possibly Gale) investigating a wholly different kind of mysterious killer, and under completely different circumstances. That would allow the creative teams to play up other genre motifs and canonical lore without being beholden to the iconism of Ghostface.
Fingers crossed someone higher up at Paramount hears my beckoning and makes it happen. Until then, the Scream franchise is available to stream via a Paramount+ subscription.