When does wryly commenting on the clichés of a film style—the slasher movie—stop to be intelligent and interesting? Someplace across the level the place the bit turns into the model, and the model turns into the cliché, it’s nonetheless being handled like a recent remark. “Scream” used to show that self-awareness right into a sharpened edge: it may wink on the guidelines and nonetheless make you tense up when the knife got here out. In “Scream 7,” the wink has turn out to be muscle reminiscence, and the franchise’s commentary is simply one other loop it may’t cease replaying.

