TL;DR: Scream 7 has released worldwide and brings Sidney Prescott back for a messy yet satisfying Ghostface showdown. It doesn’t reinvent the franchise, but it delivers strong suspense, brutal kills, and enough nostalgic punch to justify another sequel. UAE audiences can catch it in cinemas on March 19, just in time for Eid al-Fitr — and yes, it’s worth the popcorn.

Ghostface is officially back in business. Scream 7 has now released worldwide, slicing its way through global box offices, and for horror fans in the UAE, the wait comes with a festive twist: the film lands in cinemas on April 19, perfectly timed for Eid al-Fitr. Nothing says post-Ramadan celebration quite like popcorn, jump scares, and someone asking “What’s your favorite scary movie?” before ruining your week.

Thirty years into this franchise, reviewing a new Scream movie feels less like covering a sequel and more like attending a horror convention where everyone’s arguing about canon. And yet, somehow, this series still has my full attention. With Scream 7, the mask returns, the past resurfaces, and the franchise leans heavily into legacy. The result? A nostalgic, messy, mostly entertaining slasher sequel that settles for solid instead of striving for seminal.

The Return of Sidney Prescott (Again, Because Of Course)

The big headline here is the return of Neve Campbell as Sidney Prescott. After sitting out the previous film, she’s back front and center, and the movie is undeniably stronger for it. There’s something grounding about Sidney. She’s horror royalty, yes, but she’s also the franchise’s emotional spine. When she’s on screen, Scream feels like Scream.

The film opens with a sharp, efficiently tense cold open involving true-crime tourists making the deeply questionable decision to Airbnb the Stu Macher house. It’s classic Ghostface territory. Smart setup. Clean escalation. Brutal payoff. The worldwide audience reactions I’ve seen online are unanimous on one thing: the opening works. It’s lean, mean, and just self-aware enough without tipping into parody.

From there, we rejoin Sidney, who is once again attempting to live a normal life. And at this point, if you live in her zip code, you should probably invest in reinforced doors and a therapy fund. Her eldest daughter, Tatum, is curious about her mother’s past, and that generational friction becomes one of the film’s more interesting thematic threads. Legacy isn’t just about survival anymore. It’s about inherited trauma.

Kevin Williamson Back in the Director’s Chair

Control of the franchise returns to Kevin Williamson, the original writer who helped define self-aware horror in the ’90s. Seeing him step into the director’s role again feels poetic. On paper, this should be a triumphant full-circle moment.

In practice, it’s complicated.

Williamson understands the mechanics of Scream. The tension beats are there. The structure is familiar. But what’s noticeably dialed down is the razor-sharp meta commentary that once made the franchise feel revolutionary. Earlier entries dissected horror tropes, sequel logic, remake culture, and toxic fandom with surgical precision. Scream 7 flirts with ideas about true-crime obsession and legacy branding, but it never fully commits to them.

The killer reveal, teased heavily in global marketing campaigns as an “everything has led to this” moment, lands with a thud rather than a bang. I won’t spoil the motive, but it feels less like a grand design and more like a last-minute patch job. There’s conceptual potential buried in the reasoning. It just isn’t executed with the confidence we associate with Williamson’s best work.

Gale Weathers Still Owns the Room

When Courteney Cox enters the frame as Gale Weathers, the energy shifts immediately. Gale remains one of the most entertaining characters in modern horror. She’s ambitious, morally flexible, and painfully self-aware. Watching her reconnect with Sidney offers some of the film’s most grounded emotional beats.

Their shared trauma, their complicated friendship, the unspoken history between them — it’s compelling stuff. Even when the script falters, Campbell and Cox elevate the material. They bring weight to moments that might otherwise feel like fan service.

And let’s be honest. At this point, Sidney and Gale surviving yet another Ghostface massacre is less a plot point and more a franchise tradition.

The Violence Is Not “Less”

There was talk before release that this would be a less violent Scream. That feels like marketing misdirection. The kills in Scream 7 are brutal and inventive. They’re not gratuitous, but they are intense. One multi-level house chase sequence had my heart rate spiking in a way I haven’t felt since the early films.

Ghostface here feels physical. Deliberate. There’s weight behind every attack. The choreography is clean and spatially coherent, which matters more than people realize. When you understand the geography of a scene, the tension multiplies.

The film may struggle with thematic cohesion, but it absolutely remembers how to stage a suspense sequence.

Nostalgia as Both Strength and Crutch

Scream 7 leans heavily on nostalgia. The return to iconic locations. The callbacks. The musical cues. When Marco Beltrami’s score swells, it taps directly into three decades of muscle memory. The music alone carries emotional resonance that the script sometimes doesn’t.

But nostalgia is a double-edged blade. It can elevate a moment, or it can expose creative stagnation. Here, it does both. When the legacy characters drive the story, the film soars. When it shifts focus to newer faces who lack distinct personality or bite, it drifts.

That tonal imbalance is Scream 7’s core weakness. It doesn’t fully reconcile past and present. It juggles both and occasionally drops them.

A Franchise That Refuses to Die

What’s remarkable about Scream is that there hasn’t been an outright disaster entry. That’s rare for a seven-film horror franchise. The bar is low for most long-running slashers. For Scream, the bar is internal. It competes with its own legacy.

Scream 7 doesn’t reach the cultural impact of the 1996 original. It doesn’t redefine the genre. But it proves that this franchise still has creative oxygen. The global box office numbers suggest audiences aren’t done with Ghostface, and with a strong worldwide release already underway, a sequel feels inevitable.

For UAE audiences catching it on March 19 during Eid al-Fitr, the theatrical experience should be a lively one. Scream movies thrive in packed cinemas. The gasps, the laughter, the whispered “I knew it” guesses — that communal energy is part of the magic.

Verdict

Scream 7 is a nostalgic, uneven, but undeniably entertaining slasher sequel. It benefits enormously from Neve Campbell’s commanding return and Courteney Cox’s sharp presence. Kevin Williamson’s involvement adds legitimacy, even if the script lacks the biting meta brilliance of earlier chapters. The kills are inventive, the tension works, and the franchise still shows signs of life.

It’s not the definitive finale the marketing implies. But it’s a worthy continuation.