‘Scream 7’ is Caught at the Crossroads

February 26, 2026

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Here we go again (CREDIT: Paramount Pictures and Spyglass Media Group)

Starring: Neve Campbell, Isabel May, Joel McHale, Courteney Cox, Jasmin Savoy Brown, Mason Gooding, Anna Camp, Michelle Randolph, Jimmy Tatro, McKenna Grace, Asa Germann, Celeste O’Connor, Sam Rechner, Mark Consuelos, Timothy Simons, Ethan Embry, Matthew Lillard

Director: Kevin Williamson

Running Time: 114 Minutes

Rating: R for Some Rough Language and All the Usual Stabbings, Even Gorier Than Usual

Release Date: February 27, 2026 (Theaters)

What’s It About?: Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) is totally over it, you guys. She doesn’t even go by “Prescott” anymore! Instead, she’s running a coffee shop and living with her husband Mark (Joel McHale) and teenage daughter Tatum (Isabel May) in the humble town of Pine Grove, Indiana, where everybody knows her by her married name of Sidney Evans. Except of course they also know her by her maiden name as well, as her life story and the killers who follow her keep inspiring lurid movies and tabloid documentaries and copycat killers. Also, she did name her daughter after her best friend who died in the first Scream, so it’s not like she’s completely let go of Woodsboro, California either. Not like she ever could even if she tried. Especially not now, as Tatum is about the same age as her mom was when the first massacre happened, which the latest Ghostface(s) use as an opportunity to spook Sidney and her family with freakishly rendered reminders of her bloody past so as to air their grievances or become the star of their own movie or whatever the heck their motivations are this time.

What Made an Impression?: I’m Screaming Inside: Scream is my favorite horror movie franchise (and possibly my favorite franchise of every genre), but I had severe misgivings going into this seventh outing, given its tortured production history. After the success of the fifth and sixth ones, this chapter was originally going to again focus on Melissa Barrera and Jenna Ortega’s characters from those two chapters, but then Barrera was fired following pro-Palestine comments she made on social media, and Ortega soon dropped out in solidarity. Multiple directors left the project as well, and a retooling led to original Scream screenwriter Kevin Williamson stepping in as director and Neve Campbell returning once again to play Sidney, after previously sitting out Scream VI because of a lowball salary offer. None of this backstory is acknowledged within the story of Scream 7 itself, but I can’t accurately and comprehensively review it without fully acknowledging my conflicted headspace.
(Retroactive) Welcome to New York!: While the narrative of Scream 7 may not directly address the behind-the-scenes drama, it does play around with it a bit by making one of its major messages be: “Sidney, you should have been there for the last one!” Seriously, other characters keep telling her how much she was missed in NYC when the most recent Ghostfaces decided to terrorize the Big Apple. Ultimately, this sequel is kind of like an alternate Scream 5, if it had focused primarily on Sidney instead of the new generation of victims and survivors. That makes for an uncanny status quo, and a franchise uncertain of what exactly direction it wants to be heading in.
Stuck In or Rejecting the Past: Scream 7‘s other message appears to be: “We heartily reject artificial intelligence!”, as (ostensible) deepfakes of former villains become the latest weapon in Ghostface’s repertoire. The delivery of that theme feels a little half-baked, though probably genuine, considering the existential crisis that AI is for so many creative professionals. Alas, it also feels strikingly at odds with one of the movie’s promotional pushes.
So What Else Is Going On?: Now that I’ve gotten all the major headlines out of the way, please allow me to talk for a bit about something that was totally unexpected. Before the mayhem fully kicks into gear, Tatum and her friends are just regular teenagers doing regular high school things. In their case, that means rehearsing for a play about fairies and the like. Timothy Simons wrings out some laughs in this section as the awe-inspiringly pompous drama teacher directing the whole affair. It’s quite the bizarre digression.
And Then We Finally Face the Ghost: While I spent the first half of Scream 7 feeling skeptical and tepid, the final act reminded me that this series has an unstoppable knack for delivering consistently killer climaxes. The Ghostface motivation this time around is probably the most nonsensical we’ve seen thus far, but it nevertheless made for a thrilling conclusion. It also against all odds made me excited for the next chapters to come, although I would still really like to see some apologies for the personnel who have been mistreated (though I’m not exactly holding out hope for that).

Scream 7 is Recommended If You: Feel like everything is cursed nowadays

Grade: 3 out of 5 Deepfakes

Are You Ready to Book Your Spot in ‘Theater Camp’?

July 13, 2023

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Which one’s Theater and which one’s Camp? (CREDIT: SearchlightPictures/Screenshot)

Starring: Molly Gordon, Ben Platt, Noah Galvin, Jimmy Tatro, Nathan Lee Graham, Ayo Edebiri, Owen Thiele, Caroline Aaron, Amy Sedaris

Directors: Molly Gordon and Nick Lieberman

Running Time: 93 Minutes

Rating: PG-13 for Middle Schoolers Dramatizing Adult Themes

Release Date: July 14, 2023 (Theaters)

What’s It About?: If you’ve ever ventured to a certain mountain range in northern New York and thought that there should be an organization called “AdirondACTS,” then Theater Camp is the movie for you! It’s a mockumentary whose production goes off the rails immediately. While watching a middle school performance of Bye Bye Birdie, AdirondACTS founder Joan Rubinsky (Amy Sedaris) has a seizure that puts her in a coma, which leaves the camp in the not-so-capable hands of her vlogger bro son Troy (Jimmy Tatro). The counselors and campers pretty much ignore him, as they’ve got plenty of drama of their own to deal with, both in terms of the shows they’re staging and the interpersonal powder kegs they’re sitting on. In particular, there are co-dependent besties Amos Klobuchar (Ben Platt) and Rebecca-Diane (Molly Gordon), who have spent just about every summer of their lives here as either students or teachers. And the question looming everything is: can this motley band of thespians find the gumption to keep everything afloat before the evil rich neighbor camp buys them out?

What Made an Impression?: Everything Is Acting: If you believe that the stage is more essential to life than breathing, then you really ought to watch Theater Camp as soon as possible. Or actually on second thought, maybe you should avoid it like the plague, unless, that is, you can bear some light ribbing about your greatest passion. If you do indeed take acting deathly seriously, you’ll probably recognize yourself in nearly every character in this movie. Hopefully, you can keep the lampooning in perspective and lap up the teasing. If you somehow don’t recognize the humor, well, you might want to head to a psychologist for a diagnosis.
A Stranger Lurks: For any potential viewers who aren’t exactly theater obsessives, Troy can serve as a potential surrogate character into the action. Anyone familiar with Jimmy Tatro (via Netflix’s American Vandal, ABC’s Home Economics, or his own YouTube channel) already knows that he’s perfected a certain incorrigible type: the 21st Century Slacker Bro Entrepreneur. If we’re talking generations, he’s a millennial with a Gen Z soul. Troy genuinely tries to live up to his mom’s legacy and connect with the kids, but they’re essentially living on different planets. But even though he’s a screwup who’s way out of his depth, he’s a straight shooter who just can’t give up on his optimism.
Authenticity in Their Bones: If you recruited all of the most intense kids at every middle school drama club in the Northeast for some sort of real life AdirondACTS and then made a documentary about it, I worry that it would quickly turn into a neurotic disaster. But I suspect that co-directors Molly Gordon and Nick Lieberman recreated the camp experience as much as they possibly could for their cast and crew, and the results speak for themselves. Every single role is so fully realized. There’s no question that each and every actor thought deeply about their characters’ allergies, tax returns, and dream journals. Sometimes, a movie just had to exist to capture a certain group of people, and Theater Camp is one of those movies.

Theater Camp is Recommended If You Like: Waiting for Guffman, Wet Hot American Summer

Grade: 4 out of 5 Spotlights

Why Not! Welcome to ‘The Machine’!

May 28, 2023

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More Machine Than Bert (CREDIT: Aleksandar Letic/Screen Gems)

Starring: Bert Kreischer, Mark Hamill, Iva Babić, Jimmy Tatro, Jessica Gabor, Stephanie Kurtzuba, Nikola Đuričko, Oleg Taktarov

Director: Peter Atencio

Running Time: 112 Minutes

Rating: R

Release Date: May 26, 2023 (Theaters)

If you’ve read some of my other movie reviews, you might have noticed that I sometimes like to ask, “Do I want to do/be The Thing in This Movie?” So now that Bert Kreischer has taken us on a tour of Russia… do I want to be The Machine? Honestly, I think there’s a little (or a big) Machine in all of us… and I like it! We aren’t all fated to party with the Russian mafia, but surely we are all fated to encounter dangerous fun in our own particular way. So here comes the rise of My Machine*! (*-Hopefully minus the part where I would call any women in my life the C-word.)

Grade: 400 Marks out of 700 Hamills

Movie Review: ‘Stuber’ Sends Kumail Nanjiani and Dave Bautista Running L.A. Around With Their Heads Cut Off

July 11, 2019

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CREDIT: Karen Ballard/Twentieth Century Fox

Starring: Kumail Nanjiani, Dave Bautista, Natalie Morales, Betty Gilpin, Mira Sorvino, Iko Uwais, Jimmy Tatro, Karen Gillan

Director: Michael Dowse

Running Time: 105 Minutes

Rating: R for Explosive Police Detective Work and a Visit to a Strip Club

Release Date: July 12, 2019

Humor hits different people in different ways, so while it’s theoretically possible that some viewers may find Stuber hilarious, I must be honest and admit that I found it tiresome almost immediately. It all starts, or fails to get into gear rather, with that title. Stuber looks completely meaningless, and it essentially is, as so many nicknames are. The “Stuber” in question is Stu (Kumail Nanjiani), a big box employee who also works on the side for a ride sharing company that offers the perfect opportunity for an unremarkably simple portmanteau. Is this one big 90-minute long product placement vehicle for Uber? Eh, who cares, we’ve got bigger problems to deal with.

Anyway, Stu finds himself picking up a passenger who keeps him on retainer over the course of one very long day. That would be Dave Bautista as Vic, an LAPD detective who’s supposed to be taking some time to relax because his boss told him that a big drug case is being taken over by the feds and also because he’s temporarily blind from laser eye surgery. So of course Stu and Vic don’t see eye-to-eye, as that is how unlikely buddy comedies work. Alas, everything’s too loud and predictable to be endearing. Although at one point some guy does get his face blown up by a propane tank, a moment that kind of shocked me back to life. So overall, that’s about a minute worth of fresh material.

Stuber is Recommended If You Like: Action Comedies That Don’t Know When to Quit

Grade: 2 out of 5 Uber Stars