Ghostface is back. Sidney Prescott is back. Kevin Williamson — the writer who started it all in 1996 — is back, this time in the director's chair. And The Film Board is here to pick through the wreckage.
Pete Wright convenes the panel — Tommy Metz III, Steve Sarmento, and Mandy Kaplan — for a full-spoiler autopsy of Scream 7, the franchise's seventh installment and its most complicated origin story yet. The film arrives trailing the collapse of a whole other movie: Melissa Barrera's firing, Jenna Ortega's departure, two directors exiting before a frame was shot, and Neve Campbell finally getting what she was owed to come back. What ended up on screen bears those scars — and the panel doesn't look away from them.
There's plenty to argue about. Tommy arrives as the franchise's longest-tenured Film Board voice and delivers his most critical take yet — the kills are flat, the villain reveal is the weakest in franchise history, and the AI deepfake conceit is nostalgia for nostalgia's sake. Steve, against form, finds himself in the film's corner: the Sidney-Tatum mother-daughter dynamic gives him something real to hold onto, and he'll take that over clever-but-hollow any day. Mandy had a genuinely good time, found Anna Camp's casting as transparent as a freshly-cleaned window, and would very much like Tatum's next chapter to be a musical. Pete sits somewhere in the middle — glad to have Kevin Williamson back, troubled by what he had to work with, and still thinking about the better movie that never got made.
They get into the production chaos, the Barrera-shaped hole in the script, the question of whether the AI angle says anything worth saying, the correct use of a panic room, the mystery of a certain line reading, and whether Scream 7 has dethroned Scream 3 at the bottom of the franchise pile.
🎬 Watch & Discover
If you like this ep... check out some other horror favorites from across the Next Reel Family!
Scream (2022) • The Film Board • January 18, 2022
With: Ocean Murff (host), Tommy Metz III
Where the Film Board's Scream run begins. Ocean and Tommy dig into Radio Silence's relaunch — Woodsboro, the Carpenters, and a film that earns real affection while already showing the cracks Tommy will spend two more episodes cataloguing. His 1.5 stars for Scream 7 are a long way from where he started here.
Scream VI • The Film Board • March 14, 2023
With: Pete Wright (host), Tommy Metz III, Steve Sarmento, Justin Jaeger
New York, no Sidney, and the episode where this panel finds its Scream voice. Steve calls the villain motivation the franchise's Achilles heel — a verdict that lands even harder when you hear how Scream 7's killer reveal plays out. The complaints are all road-tested here first.
Last Woman Standing • Sitting in the Dark• March 28, 2025
With: Pete Wright, Tommy Metz III, Kyle Olson, Kynan Dias
The evolution of the Final Girl from Janet Leigh to the present day, examined through Prey, Sweetheart, and The Invisible Man. Scream 7 hinges on Sidney Prescott as the franchise's ur-Final Girl and closes by anointing Tatum as the next one — this is the essential companion.
Mommy Acts This Way Because She Loves You • Sitting in the Dark • May 30, 2025
With: Pete Wright, Tommy Metz III, Kyle Olson, Kynan Dias
Horror's obsession with maternal protection, control, and what happens when the drive to shield your child from harm becomes its own kind of damage — through Run, Goodnight Mommy, and mother! Steve's reading of Scream 7 as fundamentally a story about Sidney's fear of visiting her own trauma on Tatum lands squarely in this episode's territory.
Rug Pullers: Topsy-Turvy Horror Twists • Sitting in the Dark • August 29, 2025
With: Pete Wright, Tommy Metz III, Kynan Dias, Chelsea Stardust
Three films built entirely around the sucker punch — Ghostwatch, Barbarian, Strange Darling. If you want context for why the Film Board found Scream 7's killer reveal so deflating, this is the episode that sets the bar for what a well-earned horror twist actually requires.
Tommy's Terror Trope Tutorials: Book of the Vampyre and Final Girls • Sitting in the Dark • April 28, 2023
With: Tommy Metz III, Pete Wright, Ray DeLancey
Tommy builds the theoretical groundwork on the Final Girl as a horror archetype — where it comes from, what it asks of its protagonist, and whether it holds up. Essential backstory for understanding why Tommy holds the Scream franchise to the standard he does, and why this movie's handling of Sidney and Tatum hits so differently once you've heard him make that argument.
