The franchise is starting to feel soulless.
I’ve been a fan since the original. Hoped the franchise would return after the original trilogy ended. Was very sad when it looked like Scream 4 might be the unintended end. I’m aware that considering we’re on the seventh film of the franchise and many many horror franchises are much worse than this I should take it as a win but I really can’t help that the franchise feels soulless at this point.
I don’t really care about the characters anymore. Sidney just seems almost like an inhuman template of a final girl. Don’t get me wrong I don’t want Sidney completely breaking down but even with Scream 7 I wanted it to delve more in to Sidney’s trauma and her now dealing with it affecting her family.
They’ve completely made Gale kind of useless at this point. Finally we got some decent character development with her at the end of 5 and then it’s all thrown away. Gale in Scream 7 was really just there to be there and this point her character is just going to be there for nothing but quippy one liners. I don’t want Gale to just be killed off but can the writers actually give her something to do other than just ‘being there’.
Chad and Mindy are just a complete waste of airtime and at this point are purely there to appease the hardcore Scream 5/6 fans. Shame as they’re both great actors and the characters have potential but like Gale they just seem to be there for quippy one liners and for some reason neither of them can be killed which ironically if one of them were killed it would give the other twin something real to portray on screen with the trauma of loosing their sibling etc.
The new characters are just getting more forgettable and more forgettable. Are we supposed to feel bad for Tatum in Scream 8 when she’s grieving her friends that were murdered that we got to spend about 5 minutes with??? Compare how much more of an impact characters like Tatum (original), Hallie, Jennifer Jolie, Kirby even Sarah Darling made compared to Tatum’s friend group.
Of course I’ll be there opening night for Scream 8 but my god I really really just hope we don’t get more forgettable characters who are there to be quickly killed in an OTT fashion, Chad and Mindy to provide filler scenes, Gale to give us a glimpse of character development only for it to be quickly disregarded, Sidney once again being untouchable and acting like all of these attacks are nothing more than an irritating inconvenience.