One of Scream 7’s Biggest Sidney Prescott Changes Was Completely Wasted

Across its three decades of existence, the Scream franchise has become not only a staple of the horror genre but a truly sprawling epic with a vast web of characters. In a sense, it has become the Fast & Furious of the horror genre, with characters staying on the sidelines for some sequels, only to come back for a major return down the line when no one is expecting it. Scream VI pulled this off with the return of Hayden Panettiere as Scream 4‘s Kirby Reed, and Scream 7 launched itself to the biggest box office of the series by bringing back Neve Campbell as Sidney Prescott.

Campbell wasn’t alone with her Scream 7 return, with Courteney Cox back as Gale Weathers, plus “core four” members Jasmin Savoy Brown as Mindy and Mason Gooding as Chad, but there were newcomers as well. Though Sidney’s daughter, Isabel May’s Tatum, had the biggest part to play in the sequel, the other family member… marks one of the weirdest choices of the entire film. Opposite Campbell’s Sidney is fan-favorite Joel McHale as Mark Evans, her husband and the chief of police in the small town of Pine Grove, a bizarre addition to the franchise. The trouble is two-fold, though, as it not only disappointed fans of the franchise but put McHale into a box that totally failed him as a performer.

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Sidney’s Husband in Scream 7 Was a Terrible Creative Choice

At the end of Scream 3, once the actual conclusion of the entire series, it seemed like Campbell’s Sidney was set to settle down with Patrick Dempsey’s Mark Kincaid, the LAPD officer who helped her throughout the sequel. Though there was no reference to the character in Scream 4, 2022’s Scream (the fifth film) confirmed that not only was Sidney married to a “Mark” but that they had children. Many assumed that this meant the fan theory had become canon, only for Scream 7 to completely toss it out the window in a bizarre way.

When Scream 7 starts, Sidney and Mark (the one McHale plays) are happily married, and the details of how and when they got together are never fully revealed. The assumption that the “Mark” mentioned in Scream 5 not only totally derailed the fan theory but also raises big questions around Sidney that fans are still wrestling with. The whole thing makes it bizarre that hhe got involved with a SECOND police officer named Mark, though one could argue it opens up Dempsey’s Mark for a future return.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg for why McHale’s Mark is one of Scream 7‘s many problems, the second being that the character is a major waste of his talents as a performer. Across his decades of experience, McHale has crafted a specific style of comedy as his brand; smarmy, sarcastic, and a little rude are his bread and butter, but in Scream 7 he’s none of those things. In fact, McHale barely gets to crack any kind of jokes in the film at all, it’s a dud of a character that could have been played by almost anyone.

Finally, McHale’s Mark contributes to one of the worst problems of the 2020s Scream movies; he survives the entire encounter after a deadly attack. In true Scream fashion, Mark is attacked in his home by Ghostface and brutally stabbed multiple times, making us assume that he was among the victims. Instead, the film reveals in the finale that he’s actually still alive. Not only is it an awful rug pull for the movie (which it also manages to do two more times with the Meeks-Martin twins, yet again), but it makes no sense in the story. If the Chief of Police went missing during a manhunt for a murderer, one assumes his fellow cops would go looking for him, but no one seems to notice when he’s not around for hours at a time.

Scream 7 may have become the highest-grossing movie in the entire franchise when it premiered, but the slasher sequel utterly fails in many regards to the template established ahead of time. It’s a shame, too, but it does present the series with the opportunity to rectify both of these wrongs when the inevitable Scream 8 is released.