Were one to create a Mount Rushmore of scream queens, Sidney Prescott, played by the divine Neve Campbell, would certainly be among the stone-chiseled visages. And if that sculptor were queer, well, Campbell would sit at the very center. That’s because there is, and will always be, a special place in gay and sapphic hearts for her, Sidney, the ultimate survivor of the Scream movies.
For decades, Sidney has been serving mother; now, with the franchise’s latest chapter, she will be playing a mother, too. To longtime fans of Scream, this turn of events makes perfect sense. After all, the lore, beginning with the very first film, has centered around punishing the sins of the mother. The second film saw another mother out for blood, and the third once again further expanded the tragic story of Sidney’s mother, Maureen.
Neve Campbell in Scream 7.Paramount Pictures
While the series took a detour and explored Sidney being punished as a kind of surrogate mother as aunt to her niece Jill (Emma Roberts), and then delved into the sins of the father for two chapters (Scream 5 and Scream 6), the seventh film in the popular franchise once again circles back to where it all began: the maternal line of the Prescotts. This time, Sidney and her daughter Tatum (Isabel May) are caught in Ghostface’s deranged and deadly crosshairs. At its core are themes of generational trauma and mother wounds — which is just so, well, gay, and a rich jumping-off point to delve deeper into Sidney’s character and introduce Tatum’s.
As the film opens, Sidney and Tatum’s relationship is fraught. “A mother and teen daughter relationship is a complex one as it is, but with the trauma that Sidney has experienced, there's a large part of her that doesn't want to share her past with her daughter and doesn't want that to come into their lives,” Campbell tells PRIDE.
Neve Campbell, Joel McHale, and Isabel May in Scream 7.Paramount Pictures
That disconnect erects walls and boundaries that, rather than protect her daughter, create space that may leave her more vulnerable should a masked killer come knocking — which, of course, one will. But even before that, May tells PRIDE how much her character wants to understand her mother.
"Tatum wants to connect on things that really have nothing to do with Sidney's trauma. Just basic things: the first crush, first love, your interest in school, but all of that is overshadowed by what Sidney went through," May explains. "So it's very difficult for them to have an honest kind of one-on-one discussion, the way that most mother-daughter dynamics can." The film, in part, is about overcoming that, she adds.
It’s just a matter of time before the need for connection gives way to the need to survive. “As the film ensues, of course, chaos does come in,” says Campbell. “Sidney is forced to reckon with the fact that she's going to have to teach her daughter how to be a survivor, how to be courageous, and how to find one another.”
While Sidney has become a queer icon for her ability to outwit, fight back, and triumph over her would-be killers time and time again, that legacy is bolstered by the vulnerability and intellect of the character — and the queerness that is both textual and subtextual throughout.
Ghostface in Scream 7.Paramount Pictures
Having a legion of LGBTQ+ fans isn’t something Campbell takes lightly; when asked about them, the actress gets a discernible catch in her throat. “What I love about queer fans coming up to me is that they have found courage from Sidney, that they've experienced her capacity to overcome difficulty or challenge or lack of acceptance as a beautiful sort of inspiration for them. And every time someone from the queer community tells me this, I want to cry because it means — it means a lot,” she says. “I'm just grateful.”
Scream 7 arrives in theaters on Friday, February 27. Check out the trailer below.
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