20 Recent Movies That Ruined INCREDIBLE Plots

Even accepting that Scream 7 had one hell of a tricky journey to the screen, there were certainly some intriguing nuggets in the basics of writer-director Kevin Williamson's script.

For one, there was enormous meta potential in having the new Ghostface killers target Sidney's (Neve Campbell) daughter Tatum (Isabel May) - a wide-open goal for Williamson to satirise legacy sequels that pass the torch to the original hero's child.

Elsewhere the killer's ultimate motivation taps into the notion of parasocial fandom, while their use of AI to torment Sidney is another extremely timely thematic.

And yet, Scream 7 was a big ol' mess, unavoidably in part because of the firing of prior lead Melissa Barrera, in turn leading to the departure of co-star Jenna Ortega, forcing producers to effectively bribe Neve Campbell to come back.

And this is absolutely a film that feels like it was haphazardly cobbled together once Barrera was fired - a weirdly pedestrian slasher flick with groan-worthy implausibilities, forgettable death scenes, and the series' lamest killer reveal to date.

But none of this stopped it becoming the highest grossing film in the series.