‘Scream 7:’ Who is Ghostface This Time?

“Scream 7” is here.

The latest installment in the horror franchise that began with 1996’s Wes Craven–directed masterpiece “Scream” is finally here, after much controversy and behind-the-scenes hiccups. This time, the action shifts to Pine Grove, Indiana, where repeat survivor Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) is now happily married (to Joel McHale) with a family, including a headstrong teenage daughter named Tatum (Isabel May). But a new string of grisly killings forces mother and daughter to stand together as they face off against a new masked killer—or is it killers?

Courteney Cox returns as intrepid (and newly independent) reporter Gale Weathers, as do Jasmin Savoy Brown and Mason Gooding as Randy Meeks’ niece and nephew, along with a few surprises.

But this is a “Scream” movie and the most important question is, of course, who is the killer? And what are their motivations, considering this is the “Scream” universe, where everyone has a metatextual reason for mass murder?

Read on to find out. And – we cannot stress this enough – spoiler warning.

Who is Ghostface in “Scream 7?”

There are actually three this time around!

Really?

Yes.

Go on.

Early in the movie, a new Ghostface killer has been menacing Sidney, her daughter Tatum and the rest of the townsfolk in Pine Grove. The killer is in Sidney’s house and stabs both Sidney (with a fire poker) and her husband Mark. As they leave the house, Ghostface chases after them and is run over by Gale, in an SUV with Mindy and Chad. They unmask the killer, revealing him to be some guy who Sidney had seen in her coffee shop earlier in the movie. Weird.

So who is he?

He was an escaped mental patient from a nearby institution. Gale and Sidney go and visit the institution, who are told by an orderly named Marco (Ethan Embry) that he would talk to a John Doe at the institution who looked a lot like Stu Macher (Matthew Lillard).

Excuse me?

Oh yeah, there’s a runner where Stu, badly scarred after the events of the first “Scream,” returns to taunt our survivors. It’s some kind of deep fake technology but they keep the bit going for a while.

Okay.

Yeah, that’s one of the things that makes this “Scream” more modern – commentary about the dangers of artificial intelligence. Right before the big reveal at the end of the movie, a number of familiar faces flicker through the computer screen, including Nancy Loomis (Laurie Metcalf), Roman Bridger (Scott Foley) and Dewey Riley (David Arquette). While it had been reported that Skeet Ulrich would return, he is not in this “Scream”—not even in AI form.

Are there more Ghostface killers?

There are.

How many?

Two more.

And who are they?

Well, the climax of the movie has the Ghostface killers kidnap Tatum and tie her to a chair in Sidney’s backyard. It’s meant to evoke Steve’s capture at the beginning of the first “Scream” (that’s Drew Barrymore’s boyfriend). Soon, the killers are revealed—one is Marco (Embry), an orderly at the mental institution who seems to have a screw loose. Earlier in the film, he taunts the man who is killed while trying to protect Sidney and her family.

The other killer is Jessica Bowden (Anna Camp), Sidney’s cheerful next-door neighbor and the mother of Lucas (Asa Germann), one of Tatum’s classmates who is obsessed with the Woodsboro Murders and everything that followed. (He’s introduced while talking about an episode of “20/20”—or maybe it was “Dateline”—dedicated to the events of “Scream VI.”) Jessica tells Sidney that she once saw her as a mentor and, after reading her book, realized the only way to end her abusive marriage was to kill her husband—which she did and got away with. But when Sidney went into hiding and wasn’t involved in the New York City attacks (the events of “Scream VI”), Jessica felt betrayed and decided to lash out. Sidney was no longer the survivor she admired. After spending time in a mental institution, Jessica befriended Marco and hatched the plan. Now she intends to kill Sidney and Mark and raise Tatum as her own.

What happens next?

Sidney quickly dispatches Marco with a bullet to the head, but Jessica flees with Tatum into the unfinished garage of the family home. (A strange amount of time is devoted to the unfinished garage of the family home.) After an intense struggle, both Sidney and Tatum shoot Jessica to death. An ongoing gag in this movie is that the killer isn’t dead until you shoot them in the head, so they end up emptying a clip into Jessica’s head – it’s barely there when all is said and done.

Fin.