February has just begun. Before the month is out, we can look forward to two prominent events in the realm of entertainment. One is Super Bowl LX, which will air live this Sunday Feb. 8. The other, near the end of the month, is “Scream 7,” the much-anticipated legacy sequel that will be the “Scream” franchise’s first entry in three years and see the return of the first two films’ writer Kevin Williamson (now also in the director’s chair) and its once-long-running protagonist, Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell). The marketing team for this film has decided that there’s no better way to advertise it than to piggyback on the month’s most-watched television broadcast with a TV spot.
A “Scream 7” Ad We’ve Seen Before – Mostly
“Scream 7″‘s Super Bowl ad, which Paramount Pictures dropped on YouTube on Feb. 2, is 56 seconds long and consists primarily of footage that was already showcased in the much longer trailer that was released at the end of Oct. We see a shot of Sidney looking concerned, a clip of her wielding a gun while she looks around for Ghostface, her daughter Tatum (Isabel May) screaming for help, the two of them hiding inside a house’s walls while Ghostface (who fervently wants to hurt Sidney and those she loves most) searches for them, and assorted shots of Ghostface in deadly action or just brandishing that signature knife.
In terms of sheer thrills and chills, the only original touch is at the very beginning of the trailer, which briefly shows a group of people searching a dark theater with flashlights, and then a shot of a corpse dangling from the ceiling by a rope like some kind of grotesque stage prop. It’s an effective moment of almost surreal ghoulishness that is nonetheless more suited to something like an “Exorcist” film than to the relatively grounded “Scream” franchise.
On the matter of story and character, there’s one key revelation provided by Sidney’s fellow legacy character, Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox), who explains to Sidney that “this killer has been planning his attack for years. Your daughter Tatum is the same age that you were when this whole thing started.”
Did the Whodunit Guessing Game Just Get Easier?
We can’t necessarily say for certain that this line confirms the gender of “Scream 7″‘s Ghostface (was Gale perhaps using “his” on a general assumption?), though it does seem more likely now that the antagonist is masculine. Moreover, Gale’s implication that this movie’s attacks represent a macabre passing of the torch to the Prescotts’ next generation (or, rather, a bid to accomplish with Sidney’s daughter what couldn’t be accomplished with Sidney herself back in 1996) also gives greater weight to the theory that the killer is another returning legacy character.
Anyone who’s been following the news on “Scream 7” knows that Matthew Lillard will be returning as Stu Macher, one of the original film’s two Ghostfaces, who seemingly perished in that movie’s climax after Sidney knocked a television onto his face. The October trailer showcased the state of his indirect legacy by revealing that his former house – the location of said climax – has been transformed into a Ghostface-themed Airbnb. However, everyone involved with “Scream 7” has been understandably reticent on the subject of how Stu will return and the nature of his role.
Now, however, we have compelling evidence that “Scream 7″‘s Ghostface is not only someone who has known Sidney (or at least known about her) for a long time, but a character who hearkens back to the very beginning of “this whole thing” – the “Scream” franchise. It may be fair to say that Stu Macher himself has moved to the top of the list of suspects.
If Stu is in fact Ghostface, there’s no mystery as to why he’s sworn revenge on Sidney and everyone she cares about, and we can pleasantly expect that, as Stu says at the end of the trailer with all the manic whimsicality that made him such a scene-stealer back in 1996, “This is gonna be fun.”
“Scream 7” will be released in theaters on Feb. 27; tickets will be on sale starting Feb. 9.
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