Scream 7 (2026)

I know that I may be in the minority, but I need to remind people that I liked Scream VI. I liked it a lot. It gave me hope for whatever might come along next in the series. And then everything started to go wrong, starting with the poor treatment of Melissa Barrera, which would lead to at least one other main cast member leaving in solidarity. There was also some horrible AI campaign used in the marketing, as well as allowing the brand to be platformed on a major gambling site. I started to lose any enthusiasm I may have had for this. I still had to see it though.

Neve Campbell is back as Sidney, married to a cop named Mark Evans (Joel McHale) and with one teenage daughter (Tatum, played by Isabel May) who resents her over-protective nature. She may not resent it when trying to stay alive though, especially when there seems to be a new Ghostface in town. Someone who claims to be Stu Macher. Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox) arrives just in time to help unmask the killer, or killers, and she now has siblings Mindy Meeks-Martin (Jasmin Savoy Brown) and Chad Meeks-Martin (Mason Gooding) working for her.

The second feature to be directed by writer Kevin Williamson, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Guy Busick, everything here shows why Williamson should perhaps just stick to the writing side of things. Having said that, it also shows that Williamson is nowhere near the sharp and savvy writer he once was, having ensnared himself in a sticky trap of the kind of ridiculous rules and contrivances that he used to be able to freshen up and repurpose to great effect. 

It's sadly ironic that a horror movie franchise that so often played around with the rules and conventions of the genre is now so formulaic. There are things that happen here that any Scream fan will see coming miles away, from the technology used (which everyone knew would explain a number of returning characters) to the third act reveal. And it's an odd choice to now give two characters the "cloak of Dewey invincibility", but here we are.

As stale and lethargic as things have gotten behind the camera, they're equally stale and lethargic in front of it. Campbell looks as if she cannot be bothered going through all of the usual plot beats, Cox is so far removed from the character that she once was (albeit with good reason) that she may as well go the whole hog and just start up the Gale & Sidney Stabby Podcast, and newcomer-to-the-series May doesn't have any of the appeal or grit to care about once she ends up in danger. McHale is a decent addition, both Brown and Gooding continue to work well together, and Jimmy Tatro and Michelle Randolph are really enjoyable in the expected opening sequence. That's it though. Anna Camp doesn't make enough of an impression, Sam Rechner and Asa Germann are absolute non-starters, and it's only Celeste O'Connor and Mckenna Grace who feel like youngsters we may enjoy spending some time with. Then we don't get to spend much time with them. Thank goodness we get some enjoyable line deliveries from Matthew Lillard (portraying what should be referred to as Schrödinger's Stu).

As much as I disliked Scream (2022), I can now see, with hindsight, that it had a bit more going for it than I gave it credit for. The cast, whether you liked them or not, at least had some character and energy throughout. The motivation for the kills was an attempt to do something fun and interesting (whether they succeeded is a different matter entirely). And it felt as if everyone involved tried to have some fun (again, success or failure on that front is subjective). This film, opening sequence aside, doesn't have any sense of fun at all. And a Scream movie without a sense of fun is just a weak slasher that references numerous superior films.

4/10

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Madame Web (2024)

This blog is a comfort for me. It helps me put my thoughts together, it contains a path of memories that can help me remember individual movies from the thousands I have watched, and it is sometimes the only thing that helps me endure a film that is mind-bogglingly abominable. As other people have already made clear, Madame Web is mind-bogglingly abominable. As the bad reviews started to pile up, I found myself wondering how bad it could be. It was even worse than I thought.

Okay, let me give a very quick plot summary, because anything more detailed would make me feel as if I did more work in writing this than anyone did on the script. Dakota Johnson is Cassie Webb, a woman who finds out that she has the gift of premonition. Initially assuming that she cannot change the future, a pigeon interfacing with her window helps her to realise that destiny is not set in stone. That puts her on a path to confront a powerful villain, Ezekiel Sims (Tahar Rahim), a man who is determined to kill three young woman (played by Sydney Sweeney, Isabela Merced, and Celeste O’Connor) he had foreseen being the cause of his own death. Emma Roberts is onscreen to play the mother of an un-named child people can figure out will be Peter Parker, Adam Scott is “uncle” Ben Parker, and the whole thing feels like a desperate attempt to profit from the Spider-Man universe without being able to feature Spider-Man in it.

Although it seems difficult to imagine anyone coming out of this well, it’s strange to see almost everyone sleepwalk through something so dire. The messy script, as inane as it is needlessly convoluted, was written by a whole load of people, including director S. J. Clarkson, and it never gathers any momentum. In fact, this is a film in which everyone feels as if they are wading through a pool of dark and thick molasses, either due to the direction or the cast being unable to work up any enthusiasm for it.

Johnson can do good work onscreen. That is not the case here. As bad as the film is, she matches it with a charmless lead performance. Sweeney, Merced, and O’Connor do a little better, although they get even less to work with (seriously, if you can tell me their names after the end credits, or even after any scene in which they have just been featured, then I will give you a chocolate treat). At least Scott and Roberts have enough presence to make their smaller roles feel like sips of water in a scorching desert. As for Rahim, it feels bad to blame someone for a performance that was so obviously reworked and redubbed when the plot was chopped and changed around, so I will just say that he needs to wipe this film from his C.V. and line up numerous future projects that can help us all quickly forget that he is in this.

Almost every main scene has at least one moment vying to be the worst moment of the film. I think a personal favourite of mine was Cassie being told “when you take on the responsibility, great power will come” (yes, really), but an entire book could be written detailing every flaw and misjudgement. If Clarkson has nothing else lined up yet, it may be some time until she gets to helm something of this scale. It may also be some time until she wants to ever try it again.

Memorable for all the wrong reasons, this is a new contender for the dubious honour of worst superhero movie of the 21st century. Someone should have seen that coming.

2/10

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Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021)

It's no wonder that mainstream moviegoers are so often given the same product recycled again and again and again. It would seem that many, understandably, crave the comfort of familiarity over any attempts to strike out on some new directions. Sold on the line that "this is the sequel that the fans deserved"and "this is what fans really wanted", Ghostbusters: Afterlife is, essentially, a clumsy rehash of elements from the first movie. It relies so much on nostalgia, and has a plot that comes perilously close to simply being "evil dies tonight", that it's arguably closer in form to Halloween Kills than the first Ghostbusters movie.

I'm going to try to avoid spoilers here, but you can all rest easy in the fact that there are a number of satisfying cameos in this film. One such cameo is Egon Spengler. Well, it's the spirit of him. Due to Harold Ramis having passed away a few years ago, the writers of this film (Gil Kenan and director Jason Reitman) decided to kick things off with the death of his character, allowing for plenty of extra button-pushing and emotional manipulation throughout. With Spengler deceased, his property is handed over to his estranged daughter, Callie (Carrie Coon), and her children, Trevor (Finn Wolfhard) and Phoebe (Mckenna Grace). Things start to get spooky, old equipment is discovered (including the ECTO-1, of course), and there's a local teacher, Mr. Grooberson (Paul Rudd), who can provide exposition and become directly involved in the whole escapade. 

I enjoyed many parts of Ghostbusters: Afterlife, and that includes many parts that worked for me by simply making reference to the first film. It's fun to see people practising their aim with a proton pack. It's great to see the engine of the ECTO-1 starting up. And a decent part of the plotting actually works well as a direct continuation of previous events. The good work, however, is undone by the feeling of laziness, smugness, and disrespect by the time everything if thrown at the screen in the third act to placate viewers who deserved much better. A large part of the problem is the reliance on the spirit of Egon, which would have worked better if it was just, as it is in much of the movie, a vague and undefined thing. There are another couple of major issues though, and they will be brought up shortly.

Cast-wise, everyone is fine. While I am not the biggest fan of Wolfhard, and he is the least of the younger players here, he doesn’t do a bad job. Celeste O’Connor does a bit better, playing a girl who catches his eye/heart. Rudd gets to play the character who is the most amusing and Coon has to simply be “the parent”, which she does fine with. But it’s the younger cast members who shine, with Logan Kim great fun as a young podcaster, imaginatively named just Podcast, and Grace being the best new Egon type since Kate McKinnon in the last Ghostbusters movie (oh stop pretending it doesn’t exist, it is a better idea overall film than this one). Grace is so good that she makes up for a lot of what Reitman and Kenan get wrong.

Directorially sound, everything wrong here stems from a script that is desperate to remind viewers of the original without the writers themselves remembering, Yes, people love the characters and the equipment, and we all want ghosts and beasties to create havoc at times, but there should also be a lot of laughs (which this is lacking). There IS, at times, a sense of fun, and it is often blended with that warm glow of familiarity, but there are very few actual laughs. What you also used to have were movies that stemmed from a legacy of films mixing chills and humour, so it wasn’t necessarily entirely original, but it felt entirely original. What we have here is a film that cannot go for more than a few minutes without repeating a well-known beat or referencing the cinematic past of the Ghostbusters business. That doesn’t seem so bad when it all feels effective (references to Shandor work well, and some returning faces feel like a logical choice for a big villain). It fails when you realise that it’s the height of laziness (cute they may be, and in the final trailers, but there is no reason for the mini-Stay Puft characters here, except for easy bonus points and merch).

It didn’t pain me while it was on. There are some nice shots, the soundtrack works well, and uses a number of familiar cues, and one or two set-pieces feel enjoyably cinematic and able to remind us all that “bustin’ makes me feel good”. It’s not a great film though, and I would argue that it’s the weakest Ghostbusters film yet. Maybe a sequel that doesn’t feel too beholden to the original film will work better. I hope we get to find out.

5/10

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Freaky (2020)

Co-written and directed by Christopher Landon, the man who gave us the enjoyable Happy Death Day movies, Freaky is a similar fun mash-up of slasher movies and something, well, very much not a slasher movie. This time around you get some body swap shenanigans with your slasher antics.

Vince Vaughn is the killer, The Butcher, and we first see him deapatching a group of teens in entertainingly varied ways. An encounter with Millie (Kathryn Newton) and a magic knife leads to a lot of confusion when the killer wakes up in Millie’s body, and Millie is suddenly confused about why she is suddenly an adult male. Can she convince her friends, Nyla and Josh, that she is not actually The Butcher. And can she stop the killer, now able to mingle with a whole school full of potential victims, from committing a bloody massacre.

The best thing about Freaky, similar to Happy Death Day, is the way in which it so successfully mixes the slasher movie moments with the high concept. You have lots of scenes that are simply fun, and both Vaughn and Newton have a blast portraying one another, but you also have some inventive, and impressive, kills. Things are so well put together that I didn’t even mind the lapses in logic.

Landon directs well, and he certainly keeps things moving briskly enough that the 101-minute runtime never drags, and the script, also worked on by Michael Kennedy, instinctively knows how to make the most of the body swap potential. It isn’t as strong elsewhere, particularly in a strand that explores Millie’s strained relationship with her mother, but it at least has the sense to minimise any time not focused on the central cat and mouse element.

Vaughn and Newton are both excellent in their roles, with the former arguably best in that silent opening sequence (why has Vaughn so rarely been used for characters with real darkness in them?) and the latter allowed to gain a cool “no fucks given” attitude as soon as she gains the soul of a killer. Celeste O’Connor is fine as Nyla, and Misha Osherovich provides a lot of laughs as Josh. Dana Drori and Katie Finneran are just fine in their roles, Drori as Millie’s sister/local Police officer and Finneran as the mother with a drinking problem, and Uriah Shelton is cute enough as the boy that Millie has a crush on.

Not AS good as the Happy Death Day movies, mainly due to the fact that the character change is instant, for obvious reasons, rather than a journey that shows real growth, this is still a great slice of funny, gory entertainment. It also has at least three superb, and memorable, death scenes. And Alan Ruck brilliantly portraying a teacher who is quite a douchebag you want to see unwittingly piss off a serial killer.

7/10

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