MOVIE REVIEW: SCREAM 7

 

When a new Ghostface killer emerges in the quiet town where Sidney has built a new life, her darkest fears are realized as her daughter becomes the next target. Determined to protect her family, she must face the horrors of her past to put an end to the bloodshed once and for all.

Director: Kevin Williamson

Cast: Neve Campbell, Jasmin Savoy Brown, Mason Gooding, David Arquette, Matthew Lillard, Courteney Cox, Isabel May, Anna Camp, Michelle Randolph, Jimmy Tatro, Mckenna Grace, Asa Germann, Celeste O'Connor, Sam Rechner, Mark Consuelos, Tim Simons, Joel McHale

Release Date: February 27, 2026

Genre: Horror, Mystery

Rated R for strong bloody violence, gore, and language.

Runtime: 1h 54m

Review:

Scream 7 boast the return of franchise star Neve Campbell and the original writer, Kevin Williamson, behind the camera but this entry lacks any scares or tension while providing plenty of unintentional laughs.  There’s plenty of nostalgia and Easter Eggs thrown onscreen right off the bat which leads you to believe that Williamson intimate knowledge of the franchise and character would lead to something interesting and engaging.  Instead, we get a fairly straightforward take of Sidney as an overprotective mother who has a daughter that’s starting to resent her.  It is interesting enough, initially, thanks to a committed turn from Neve Campbell who jumps back in with relative ease but Williamson doesn’t take full advantage of it by breezing through their relationship before the entrails start gushing.  It’s a shame because Isabel May and Neve Campbell work well together onscreen but the hackneyed, non sensical script fumbles it all away.  Clocking in at nearly two hours, you expect a bit more time would be spent developing a least one or two of the new characters thrown onscreen instead of the paper-thin characterizations we get.  As a result, they barely register onscreen and having Isabel May play an insecure type who ends up in a dog costume in the school play while she looks like a super model is more than a little bit of a stretch.  Jasmin Savoy Brown and Mason Gooding, returning from the previous entry, fare far better by bringing some life to the screen when they pop up with Courteney Cox about halfway through the film.  Their natural charisma and energy shines through so much that you wish Williamson would have taken better advantage of them.  Cox can play this role in her sleep by this point but she’s seemingly begging for something more interesting and impactful to do which is hinted at but never explored.  All of this would be easier to shallow is the film was actually scary which it isn’t as all the kills are and set pieces come off as goofier than tense, eliciting more laughs than anything else especially when the final revel occurs.  Scream 7 probably isn’t the last entry in the franchise but it’ll need some serious course corrections if it doesn’t want to slip further into a parody of itself.

C-

MOVIE REVIEW: FIVE NIGHTS AT FREDDY'S 2

 

One year has passed since the supernatural nightmare at Freddy Fazbear's Pizza. Former security guard Mike has kept the truth from his 11-year-old sister, Abby, concerning the fate of her animatronic friends. When Abby sneaks out to reconnect with Freddy, Bonnie, Chica and Foxy, she sets into motion a terrifying series of events that reveal dark secrets about the true origin of Freddy's.

Director: Scott Cawthon

Cast: Josh Hutcherson, Elizabeth Lail, Piper Rubio, Matthew Lillard, Skeet Ulrich, Wayne Knight, Mckenna Grace, Teo Briones

Release Date: December 5, 2025 

Genre: Horror, Mystery, Thriller

Rated PG-13 for violent content, terror and some language.

Runtime: 1h 44m

Review:

Five Night at Freddy's 2 is a mess of a horror sequel that improves on the original merely because it’s so bad and incoherent that it’s funnier as it goes along.  Emma Tammi returns behind the camera and does a capable job of directing the action and delivering a handful of well-timed jump scares throughout.  She moves the action along at a steady pace in spite of the increasingly incoherent mythology being thrown onscreen.  Those who have played the games might get more of out all of this but as a straightforward film the number of illogical concepts and ideas thrown out onscreen are bound to confuse the uninitiated.  The main story cherry picks story elements from A Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th padded with a pack of clichéd childhood trauma which makes everything feel very generic and terribly unoriginal.  There are plenty of nonsensical horror movies out there which still manage to be engaging or fun, but this one just leaves you scratching your head or asking more questions as the story gets sillier.  There are a variety of just goofy things like 80’s era animatronics having tracking mechanisms and location locks, returning characters being entirely unaware of other locations of the restaurant that are in the general area or an all-night science fair just to name a few.  The cast does what it can with the material with both Josh Hutcherson and Elizabeth Lail desperately searching for a better film to no avail.    They both are solid across the board even though their characters are thrown into a variety of exceedingly preposterous situations which is exemplified by Hutcherson’s character questioning the lack of a door in haunted pizza joint before using an animatronic face to confuse the possessed animatronic robots.  Piper Rubio returns from the original as Abby, it’s passable but hampered by an unfortunate haircut that might remind a few people of Lord Farquaad from the original Shrek.   Matthew Lillard returns for a quick hallucinatory sequence with Elizabeth Lail that’s far more inventive and interesting than everything else in the film.  Skeet Ulrich, Wayne Knight and Mckenna Grace have small supporting bits which really don’t add all that much to the overall film outside of throwing familiar faces at the screen.  Five Night at Freddy's 2 is at, the very least, funny even if unintentionally but the set up for a third part is real headscratcher because who exactly is asking for that.

D+

MOVIE REVIEW: FIVE NIGHTS AT FREDDY'S

A troubled security guard begins working at Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria. While spending his first night on the job, he realizes the late shift at Freddy's won't be so easy to make it through.

Director: Emma Tammi

Cast:  Josh Hutcherson, Elizabeth Lail, Piper Rubio, Mary Stuart Masterson, Matthew Lillard

Release Date: October 27, 2023

Genre: Horror, Mystery, Thriller

Rated PG-13 for strong violent content, bloody images and language.

Runtime: 1h 50m

Five Nights at Freddy's is a rather bland, uninspired slog of a horror movie that's decidedly light on scares and mostly devoid of fun.  Emma Tammi's film is surprisingly self serious with only small slivers of humor sprinkled throughout its overlong runtime.  Its a strange choice for a video game adaptation about possessed animatronics from an 80's pizza place and it doesn't pay off since the story doesn't offer anything terribly engaging or fresh.  The whole thing plays out in fairly predictable fashion which kills any sense of tension since every surprise is telegraphed from a mile away.  Scares are decidedly sparse with only a handful of cheap jump scares sprinkled throughout.  Josh Hutcherson, for his part, tries his best to bring some sort of energy and life to the whole thing.  He does admirable work by giving his character far more depth and texture than the film deserves.  Elizabeth Lail is saddled with a paper thin character, an overly invested local cop, it doesn't help that she doesn't share much believable chemistry with Hutcherson.  Piper Rubio fares better with a likable turn as the little sister that manages to be cute but never annoying.  Ultimately, Five Nights at Freddy's falls flat offering little outside of Easter Eggs for fans of the game but if you must get your film of haunted 80's pizza palaces you'd be better off watching recent films like The Banana Splits Movie or Willy's Wonderland.

 

D