Suspension of disbelief fuels movies. We’re constantly asked to accept little conveniences and nick of time moments that keep a protagonist alive and keep the plot moving forward. The key is to not ask the viewer to suspend their disbelief too much. If that is asked of them, it’s a rubber band that is going to snap, never to be mended throughout the remainder of the runtime. The Scream franchise used to be really great about suspending disbelief just shy of the breaking point. These days, it’s snapping that rubber band in a very particular way. The first time, in Scream (2022), it was more or less okay, but then in Scream VI it became a bit of an eye-roller. Now, Scream 7 has asked the audience to accept something silly once more, and it’s simply too much.
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What we refer to, when it comes to this particular disbelief suspension, is just how many characters live. This is particularly true of two individuals who, by this point, really shouldn’t have a drop of blood in their bodies.
Naturally, heavy spoilers for Scream 7 follow.
Who Lives in Scream 7 & How Have the Stakes Plummeted?
Plot armor is a story device that allows a particular character to survive things that might take down others. For years, there were three characters in the Scream saga who, quite understandably, were allowed to wear some nice plot armor: Sidney Prescott, Gale Weathers, and Dewey Riley. We loved them, so we turned a blind eye to Dewey stumbling out of Stu Macher’s house with a knife in his back and living to fight another day in Scream 2. We accepted him getting stabbed and thrust upon the soundproof glass with a spurt of blood in that sequel only to once more live in Scream 3.
But then Radio Silence’s era started and did away with Dewey, which definitely worked, but that 2022 film may very well have divided his plot armor amongst too many folks. It made sense with the Carpenter sisters, but Chad and Mindy Meeks-Martin? They are definitely likable presences, and it’s nice to see them in Scream 7, but one of them definitely should have died here, at least if this installment truly did want to have the raised stakes its marketing tried to convey.
For one, Chad should have definitely been dead in Scream VI. Quinn Bailey and Ethan Landry turned him into a human shish kabob. He also got it pretty rough in the fifth film, so for him to be walking around without so much as a noticeable injury is pretty ludicrous. This was the franchise that put Drew Barrymore on the poster and killed her off in the first scene. It successfully established Jamie Kennedy’s Randy as a beloved character in film one and butchered him midway through film two. We felt the gravity of the characters’ situations because of those kills.
The franchise’s lack of predictability didn’t stop with those two top-tier movies, either. Scream 3, which is starting to look pretty okay these days, did a great job of making Parker Posey’s Jennifer Jolie nearly as integral as the main trio then killing her off. Surely there were people in the audience who thought she was going to make it all the way through.
And, while it was retconned, anyone who saw Scream 4 opening night (and there weren’t that many) can remember gasping along with everyone else when Charlie stood up and stabbed Kirby in the stomach. Granted, one might argue that Kirby is an example of someone who benefitted from plot armor, but even there it makes way more sense that she lived. She got stabbed in the stomach once. You can live through that. In Scream (2022) Chad got stabbed about seven times and then another 10 or so in Scream VI. That’s well beyond Dewey-level “how did he survive that?”
The simple truth is that, as much as it pains a mega fan to say, Scream 7 is indicative of a franchise running on an empty tank. But, if it does continue, it needs to get back to just about everyone being fair game. By this point Scream has become Friday the 13th, where we have a pretty good idea by the end of act one who will be gone at the end of act three.
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