The film is less interested in being genuinely scary than in sustaining a particular genre cocktail: gore plus dark humour plus chase mechanics. Its pleasures are visceral and comedic rather than suspenseful.
Scream 7 is unlikely to disappoint franchise fans, because it delivers the familiar ingredients with enough energy and self-awareness to keep the machinery running: media satire, nostalgia, meta-theory, and the enduring thrill of a mask that can belong to anyone.