SCREAM 7

*CUT TO THE CHASE*

NOTE: This spoiler was submitted by Jeremy

The film opens in Woodsboro, as a couple – Scott and Madison (Jimmy Tatro and Michelle Randolph) – arrive at the former home of Stu Macher (Matthew Lillard), which has now been turned into a Ghostface-themed AirBnB for both the original murders committed by Stu and Billy Loomis, as well as the spree led by Amber Freeman and Richie Kirsch. Scott is a huge horror nerd while Madison is creeped out by the whole place, not helped by a motion sensor Ghostface statue.

The house’s host calls Scott and Madison with some horror movie trivia, per Ghostface tradition. However, Madison soon gets a call to her phone with Ghostface’s voice (Roger L Jackson), threatening to kill her, but she thinks it’s Scott. Ghostface himself eventually emerges and stabs Scott twice in the chest before jamming the knife in his skull. Madison runs upstairs and manages to knock Ghostface off the ledge when he chases her up there, but she falls onto his knife. Ghostface then douses Madison and the rest of the house in gasoline before lighting her and the whole place on fire.

In Pine Grove, Indiana, Tatum Evans (Isabel May) is visited by her boyfriend Ben Brown (Sam Rechner). This is broken up by Tatum’s mother – Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell), who naturally has a good reason not to trust the boyfriend. Sidney has tried to build a life away from Woodsboro with Tatum and her husband, officer Mark Evans (Joel McHale).

The next day, Tatum goes to school with her best friends Chloe Parker (Celeste O’Connor) and Hannah Thurman (Mckenna Grace) after Ben picks them up. Sidney goes to her job where she manages a cafe. She is visited by her neighbor Jessica Bowden (Anna Camp) and her son Lucas (Asa Germann), the latter who wants to interview Sidney about her past with killers. Sidney then spots a shady-looking guy getting his coffee as he eyes her.

At school, Tatum is participating in the school play but gets criticized by drama teacher Mr. Willis (Tim Simons) for not having enough energy (she is just a dog that says “woof”) and unfairly compares her to her mother. Chloe, Hannah, and Ben try to reassure Tatum.

In her office, Sidney gets a call from Ghostface. She is mostly unfazed at this point until the killer claims to be Stu, somehow alive despite getting a TV dropped on his head. He looks older and scarred up as he contacts Sidney via video call, and he shows that he is outside Tatum’s high school theater department. Sidney contacts Mark and races to the school.

Hannah is still strung up on wires when Ghostface sneaks into the building. He slashes the throat of tech guy Aaron (Cyle Winters) before tormenting Hannah by swinging her with the wires. Ghostface slashes at Hannah’s arms and legs before holding the knife up so that she is gruesomely disemboweled as she swings back down. Sidney arrives to witness the aftermath and tries to shoot Ghostface, but he escapes. Police later question Tatum and her friends, who are now in shock over Hannah’s murder.

Back at home, Sidney tries to get herself, Mark, and Tatum out of the house. Tatum brings up how she’s named after Sidney’s late best friend who was a victim of Billy and Stu, and how she doesn’t want to be a victim, but a fighter. Soon, Ghostface emerges after sneaking in through the attic. He holds Tatum at knifepoint, prompting Sidney and Mark to defend her. Mark gets thrown down the stairs but Sidney guides Tatum to a safe room and sneaks her out through the walls.The parents fight Ghostface out into the street, where he gets run over by a van driven by none other than Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox), accompanied by her new interns, Chad and Mindy (Mason Gooding and Jasmin Savoy Brown).

Sidney and Gale reunite after Sid sat out the New York killing spree. They go to unmask the killer, who turns out to be a man named Karl Allen Gibbs, the creepy guy Sidney saw at the coffee shop. Nobody knows what connection he has with Sidney or why he was targeting her and using Stu to lure her in. She and Gale learn that Gibbs escaped from Fallbrook Psychiatric Hospital.

Sidney and Gale visit Fallbrook and speak to an orderly named Marco (Ethan Embry). He shows them Gibbs’ room and recognizes Stu’s picture as a patient named “John Doe”, who supposedly suffered memory loss after a traumatic head injury. Sid and Gale then come up with a plan to lure “Stu” out, by having Sidney sit down for an interview with Gale on live TV.

Back at the Evans house, Mark is left alone and is attacked by Ghostface. He covers Mark in plastic wrap before stabbing him repeatedly.

Tatum joins Chloe, Ben, Lucas, Chad and Mindy at the bar where Chloe works, since everyone is a suspect. Mindy breaks down “the rules” for this killing spree, which is that this Ghostface is relying on nostalgia to get to Sidney. Mindy suspects Lucas because he gives off “creepy” vibes, while Ben is tech-savvy enough to have created a deepfake of Stu to scare Sidney.

Sidney sits down for the interview, which Tatum and her friends watch. The interview goes south when Gale starts to ask Sidney about her kids, including the other two she has who are staying with Mark’s mom. Sidney ends the interview, but “Stu” ends up calling anyway and says he is outside the bar where Tatum is. Sidney rushes out.

The lights go out at the bar. Chloe is attacked by Ghostface in the kitchen. In her defense, she tries to stab him but accidentally gets Chad in the shoulder. Ghostface slashes Mindy’s stomach and leaves the twins before going after Chloe. He kills her by dragging her across the bar, crashing into glasses and getting a shard in her throat. The killer then stabs Lucas in the gut and impales his skull on the bar’s tap handle. Tatum tries to flee with Ben but gets spooked when she sees he made a deepfake video using Stu, leading her to think he’s Ghostface. She knocks him out with his laptop but is found by the actual Ghostface.

Tatum runs out into the empty streets since a curfew is in effect. Ben catches up to her, and she apologizes for thinking it was him, but Ghostface stabs Ben to death. Tatum barely has time to grieve before she makes it to Sidney’s cafe and gets in touch with her mom, who says there’s a gun in the office. Tatum runs in and blocks Ghostface from entering. Using security cameras, Sidney guides Tatum to shoot Ghostface through the walls. It briefly brings him down, as Tatum goes outside to check, but Sidney watches as a second Ghostface emerges and helps kidnap Tatum. The killer calls Sidney and tells her to find them at her house.

Sidney arrives and sees that Ghostface indeed used AI technology to create videos using Stu, plus previous Ghostfaces Nancy Loomis (Laurie Metcalf) and Roman Bridger (Scott Foley), and even Dewey (David Arquette) to taunt Sidney. She sees the first Ghostface, revealed to be Marco, holding Tatum at knifepoint. The second Ghostface drags Mark out, who is surprisingly still alive. She reveals herself to be Jessica. Her motive was that she was inspired by Sidney and her memoirs to be a fighter, leading Jessica to kill her abusive husband. However, she was upset that Sidney wasn’t there for the New York murders, so she lured her back and wants to make Tatum the new final girl by killing Sidney. Mark manages to cut Tatum free, leading her to run while Sidney blows Marco’s brains out. Sidney chases Jessica and fights her, stabbing her repeatedly until Tatum shoots Jessica. Unfortunately, she missed the head, as Jessica rises again, but Sidney and Tatum shoot her enough times for Jessica’s face to fall off.

Mark is taken to the hospital, while Gale arrives with the once again unkillable Chad and Mindy. Gale reconciles with Sidney and lets Mindy do a news report. Sidney then talks to Tatum about why she named her after her best friend, which gives her daughter reassurance. They then go to join Mark at the hospital.

Sidney Prescott has made a new life for herself outside of Woodsboro by moving to the town of Pine Grove, Indiana, where she lives with her cop husband Mark Evans and their three kids, including teenage daughter Tatum. However, yet another Ghostface emerges to terrorize Sidney, this time targeting Tatum to get to her. What’s more is that the killer appears to be using AI deepfakes to convince her that he is Stu Macher, one of the first Ghostfaces that possibly survived his encounter with Sid.

Ghostface’s victims this time include a couple named Scott and Madison, who stay at Stu’s former home and are killed there. He kills Tatum’s friend Hannah by disemboweling her, along with slashing classmate Aaron’s throat. Tatum’s other friends Chloe and Lucas are killed at a bar, and her boyfriend Ben is also stabbed to death after being previously deemed a suspect. Chad and Mindy, who are now interns for Gale, get attacked again but they once again survive.

The first Ghostface is an escaped mental patient named Karl Gibbs, who was actually a pawn of the real Ghostface, Sidney’s neighbor Jessica, who also used an orderly named Marco as her number two Ghostface. She was inspired by Sidney to kill her abusive husband, and she even killed Lucas (her own son) because he reminded her too much of his father. When Sidney sat out the New York killing spree, Jessica got upset and lured her back with AI deepfakes of Stu and former Ghostfaces Nancy Loomis and Roman Bridger to kill Sidney and make Tatum the new final girl. Mark, who was attacked but survived, frees Tatum. Sidney kills Marco, and she and Tatum fight Jessica until they shoot her dead.