Neve Campbell – THE REVIEW MONSTER

I am a fan of the Scream franchise.
I enjoyed the first four movies as a teenager and got back on board with the fifth and sixth film.
While in retrospect Scream 6 had some issues, I was still looking forward to the conclusion of the new trilogy to see how the Carpenter sisters’ story would end.
Then Melissa Barrera was unjustly fired for her comments on Palestine.
Then Jenna Ortega also dropped out.
The director bailed and the script for the seventh film was thrown out.
Needless to say, these events had me extremely worried for Scream 7’s quality.
Unfortunately, these concerns were justified because, after seeing the seventh film, I can say that the Scream franchise has finally had a bad film.

Ghostface walking away from torching the *Scream* franchise.

Before this, the weakest film in the series was Scream 3, but even that had its fun with campy moments and good characterization.
The seventh film has none of that, with an extremely boring and forgettable cast overall, twists that are somehow both predictable and completely stupid, and an eye-rolling amount of callbacks.
The story once again follows Sidney Prescott, as her daughter Tatum (Isabel May) and husband Mark (Joel McHale) are threatened by the return of Ghostface.
With a cast of boring suspects, she must stop the killer before it is too late, all the while trying to determine if Stu Macher (Matthew Lillard) has really returned.
Neve Campbell is back as Sidney and, while it is good to see her return, after a pay dispute caused her to leave Scream 6, her character does no have much meaningful development.

Although Neve Campbell does a good job, as expected.

Her character’s husband and daughter also feel bland, and the latter is supposed to be the secondary main character.
Sidney is not the only returning character however because Gale (Courtney Cox), Mindy (Jasmin Savoy-Brown) and Chad (Mason Gooding) also return but, for the life of me, I cannot understand why.
I mean, I get why Gale would try to pursue the story of another Ghostface killer, but she does not have enough presence in the film to warrant a return.
Neither do Chad and Mindy, since the two could have been absent and nothing about the story would change.

It feels really weird that the Meeks siblings are back but not Sam and Tara.

So, the characters are a bust, but what about the mystery?
It is always fun to watch a Scream movie and guess who the killers are before the big reveal.
Well, not this time.
The hints towards the killers are so blindingly obvious, I guessed it from their first appearances.
What makes it worse is that in practically every Scream movie, there is a killer with a deep connection to our main cast.
Either that or their motive ties into the themes.
Not this movie.
No, instead the characters playing the Ghost Face killers are barely in the movie before the reveal, and their motivations make zero sense.
In my opinion, these are the worst Ghost Face killers of the entire series.
They have so little screen presence, their plans are dumb and I cannot for the life of me even remember their names.

The killers who got murdered at the beginning of *Scream 6* were better characters than these clowns.

The only memorable thing about this film’s killers is their frequent nostalgia baiting, but that is not the kind of thing I want to remember.
The callbacks to prior films made my eyes roll so far to the back of my head, I was worried they would get stuck there forever.
The only redeeming qualities to this film are that the performances are admittedly decent, some of the action is well-done, and the gore made me wince.

If you are a fan of gory horror movies, you might get some enjoyment from the horror. Some.

Other than these few positives, Scream 7 is a disaster.
The new characters are dull, most of the old ones do not have a reason to be here beside nostalgia, said nostalgia is handled in an extremely annoying way, and, to top it all off, the film has the worst killers of the franchise.
Scream 7 is the worst Scream film and it is not even close.
They should have gone with the original plan for this movie and never fired Melissa Barrera.
It would probably have been good and not… whatever this was.
If I were to rewatch the Scream movies, this is one I will undoubtedly skip.

Have you ever wondered what Die Hard would be like if Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson was in it?
If this applies to you then Skyscraper is definitely your kind of movie.
Directed by Rawson Marshall Thuber, Skyscraper stars The Rock as Will Sawyer a government agent turned security consultant and family man after a horrific accident amputated his leg.
After Sawyer’s family is trapped in the world’s tallest Skyscraper, The Pearl, with terrorists hoping to get something from its creator Zhao Long Ji (Chin Han), its up to Sawyer to rescue them and stop the terrorists.
Skyscraper is nothing new as it heavily takes influence from Die Hard and a bunch of its imitators.
However, if anything the film seems to embrace its Die Hard influence based on that poster.

That being said, even though I could not watch this movie without thinking of Die Hard, Skyscraper is still an enjoyable action flick with quite a few entertaining set pieces.
The acting is solid with The Rock once again turning in a likable performance and his character’s wife (Neve Campbell) and their children are also well acted.
These characters’ likability is enhanced by the action they are involved in with the final action sequence being particularly entertaining through how its environment was utilized.

Don't fall.jpg — The action of *Skyscraper* is genuinely good with its action set pieces.

The action even made me like the minor characters as well.
The body guard Ajani Okeke (Adriam Holmes) for example, was a minor character but one of the things he did during this movie was very heroic and made me like his character, even with he had very limited screen time.
However, even though the characters were likeable and some of the action was pretty entertaining, this film just could not escape its Die Hard influence.
On top of this, some elements of the film did not make that much sense.
(Minor spoilers here) For example, people were cheering on Sawyer during his heroic efforts in the movie but at that point the media was stating he was involved in the terrorist attack so it did not make sense for the crowds to be cheering him on.
Still Skyscraper was an enjoyable film despite its problems.
You will have fun with it but will have a hard time separating it from Die Hard.

Tag: Neve Campbell

Scream 7 Review: A Gutting Disappointment.

Skyscraper – Basically Die Hard but with The Rock.