‘Scream 7’ Almost Had a Different Yet Equally Nonsensical Ending

**Spoilers ahead for several Scream movies, including the newest one**
Scream is probably my favorite horror franchise when it comes down to how much I like the individual films. There are certainly others that come close. But, for a long time, even the worst Scream movie (the third) was still more watchable than a lot of other series’s worst films. Then, Scream 6 came out, and just broke me.

I actually liked the film that preceded it (Scream 2022) quite a bit and thought the filmmakers did a great job mimicking the spirit of the first four movies while bringing their own ideas to the table. Some stuff seemed cheesy or cheap, but the movie was not only aware of that, but it also called it out with gusto. It ended with a promise for future films that felt exciting. Then, all of that was reset for the sequel.

Any momentum that was built in Scream 2022 is undone in the opening ten minutes of the film. An interesting reveal is doubled back on immediately (in a way that reveals the killer pretty quickly), and our lead (played by Melissa Barrera) is in therapy and taking medication to deal with her violent tendencies. It felt like starting over again.

The movie continues in such glaringly obvious ways that it felt a little embarrassing. The franchise started to feel like a parody of itself. Still, as obvious as it was, at least most of the things added up (in the age of social media, I’m supposed to believe that Barrera didn’t recognize she was with her murderous ex’s family the whole time?). The new film cannot say the same.

Scream 7 happened how it did because Melissa Barrera dared to speak out. While the new movie is making money, it’s left a bad taste in many mouths. A lot of that has to do with the ending. The film is plugging along just fine and even starts to subvert the expectations that it set about halfway through. Suddenly, it became very difficult to find who the killer was. But, unfortunately, that’s because the reveal (mostly) came out of left field.

Now, writer and director Kevin Williamson, who returned to this franchise to helm this installment, has revealed that the ending almost went (slightly) differently. In the film as it is, the killer is revealed to be a mom who is Sidney’s next-door neighbor and Ethan Embry (he doesn’t play himself, but it really doesn’t matter). Their reasoning is convoluted (even for this franchise) and feels empty. Meanwhile, the movie had spent most of the run time teasing the return of Stu Macher, only to finally reveal that he’s good and dead.

However, Williamson now claims that the real Stu almost made an appearance instead of being AI (jerkoff motion). “We wanted to have our cake and eat it too,” the writer explained to Empire recently. “We shot a little coda at the end that we had in our back pocket. But oddly enough, the decision was that the audience wanted him dead.” Fair enough, I guess. I don’t know if Stu’s reappearance would have added much anyway.

There’s a moment I mentioned earlier, when one of the people eventually revealed to be one of the killers mentions a jerk ex-husband she had. For a moment, I was convinced that it was Stu. To the movie’s credit, I think it wanted me to think that. It wouldn’t have been a great reveal since it was so clearly set up. But, later, the movie swerves, and you find out it wasn’t Stu. Who was it? No one. They died offscreen. Shrug emoji.

I don’t know what could have fixed the ending, but adding Stu probably wouldn’t have helped. Instead, we just get another disappointing outing in what used to be one of the most consistent horror franchises. At least it was better than the last one, but it did not clear that very low bar by much.