SCREAM 7

Ghostface on the loose!

SCREAM 7 (2026). Co-written and directed by Kevin Williamson. 

Sidney (Neve Campbell) has relocated to the new town of Pine Grove with her sheriff husband Mark (Joel McHale) and teenage daughter, Tatum (Isabel May). Then Sidney begins to get video calls from Stu Macher (Matthew Lillard), one of the killers in the original Scream. But hasn't Stu been dead for years? When the killings start again with a new Ghostface on the loose, Sidney and old pal Gail Weathers (Courteney Cox) team up to investigate if Stu is somehow still alive or if someone else is hiding behind AI-generated deep fakes. 

Victims: Tatum (right) and her pals

Scream 7 is a fast-paced, often thrilling, and quite suspenseful slasher flick with generally good performances. The best sequences are the prologue with a young couple running into trouble in a house that commemorates the murders back in Hillsboro, and a sequence in which a poor victim in a bar is sort of turned into a beer spigot. Usually the Scream movies are comparatively restrained and tasteful, but a gross and sadistic sequence in a theater features a graphic disembowelment that might be more at home in one of those Terrifier movies. The motive for the gruesome murders, as many others have noted, is so lame as to be laughable, but fortunately it doesn't ruin the movie. Although the Scream flicks were originally black comedies with as many jokes as screams, this installment -- aside from the dumb finale -- is basically played more or less straight. As usual the film glosses over the utter misery faced by the loved ones of the victims left in the wake of the maniac. Campbell and Cox also appeared in 2022's Scream. Mason Gooding, one of Gail Weathers' team, was also in the slasher flick Heart Eyes. 

Verdict: Still fun despite its flaws. ***. 

BARE BONES # 26

BARE BONES 26. Spring 2026. Edited by Peter Enfantino and John Scoleri. 

Here we've got a fresh crop of new articles on the rare, the obscure, and the fascinating in movies, television, comics and more. This edition revisits the Boston Blackie film series starring Chester Morris (written by Tim Lucas), Douglas E. Winter investigates Poe's "Black Cat" and the Italian horror film; Peter Enfantino reviews paperbacks in "Sleaze Alley;" yours truly looks back at the old TV series Dangerous Assignment starring the gruff Brian Donlevy; plus pieces on MacKenna's Gold; Dell first editions; Doctor Death; and more by Stephen Bisette, Stephen Laws, David J. Schow and others. 

You can order Bare Bones 26 directly from Amazon. Great reading! 

THE BEAUTY Season One

Ashton Kutchner

THE BEAUTY (2026 TV series). Season One. Co-produced by Ryan Murphy.  

FBI agents Cooper Madsen (Evan Peters) and Jordan Bennett (Rebecca Hall), who claim they are just "casually" involved with each other, stumble across an incredible conspiracy engineered by billionaire Byron Forst (Vincent D'Onofrio, then Ashton Kutchner). A scientist in the sociopathic Forst's employ has come up with "the Beauty," an all-purpose, essentially instant chemical injection that can turn a person younger and more attractive once they emerge from a kind of plastic cocoon. Unfortunately, after three years or so those who take the Beauty may literally explode, as happens to several crazed fashion models. The Beauty is essentially a plague, and can be sexually transmitted, bypassing the injection, although the results in that case are even more uncertain. Jordan, who has sex with a hot guy who took the treatment, becomes younger and sexier (turning into Jess Alexander), Cooper undergoes a startling transformation, and one poor teenage girl ... Millions of people would hock their souls to get the treatment, but is the cost too high, and what about the horrific side effects undergone by some patients?

Isabella Rossellini

Based on a graphic novel, The Beauty, which has quite a few satiric targets, can be dumb, but it is also fascinating, suspenseful, odd, very gross at times, and I must admit highly enjoyable, a sort of guilty pleasure. Kutchner gives a ferociously mesmerizing performance as the utterly self-centered and evil younger version of Forst, and the other players -- including Anthony Ramos as a hit man employed and then betrayed by Forst -- are on the money. Isabella Rossellini is Forst's sarcastic and uncompromising wife, who seems to completely detest him, and Ben Platt is perhaps overly campy as a guy who gets infected when a model bursts into pieces at a public function. Viewers might see some similarities to The Substance, but the Beauty graphic novel was published several years before the Demi Moore movie.

Verdict: Compelling and slick horror series. Let's hope there's a season two. ***.