The old horror movie franchise Scream is still going strong, with Scream 7 playing in theaters and making so much money that Scream 8 is reportedly in the early planning stages. Neve Campbell, who became a movie star playing the lead character, “final girl” Sidney Prescott — the always-targeted victim of the stabby Ghostface since the first Scream back in 1996 — has returned in the new sequel after having dropped out of Scream 6 when the producers wouldn’t meet her price. But obviously, they paid up this time around.

So is Scream 7 a good movie? Oh God, no. It’s pretty bad — rote and tired. But it’s the most profitable film yet in the franchise. I saw it in a theater where some die-hard fans gave it an enthusiastic reception, including one guy who had an off-putting slasher movie tic, exclaiming “Nice!” every time Ghostface killed someone with extreme gruesomeness. And in this movie, he had lots of opportunities to say, “Nice!”

For Scream 7, the unenterprising screenwriters Kevin Williamson and Guy Busick lifted the premise from the rebooted Halloween (2018), which involved the killer Michael Myers setting his sights on the next generation and attempting to slaughter a mother-daughter combo of Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) and her estranged daughter, Karen (Judy Greer). Translated to the much more pedestrian Scream 7, this means Sidney Prescott has to reconcile with her peeved and overprotected teenage daughter Tatum (Isabel May) in order to teach her how to be scrappy and fight off Ghostface time after time.