I Love The Way Scream 7 Used Matthew Lillard, But One Big Cameo Made Zero Sense To Me

Spoilers galore below for all things involving Scream 7’s big twists, so anyone who hasn’t yet watched it should tread very lightly.

No matter how hard one might try to avoid any and all spoilers involving a movie, the blood-stained spotlight on Scream 7 made it nearly impossible to avoid certain details prior to its 2026 release date. Neve Campbell’s return obviously wasn’t hidden, since Sydney was a clear selling point, and seemingly no one tried too hard to shield fans from knowing that Matthew Lillard returned, even if the details were kept super-secretive. But they weren’t alone.

Scott Foley’s cameo was leaked months ahead of release, and David Arquette’s return also went public, with Laurie Metcalf’s cameo all but certain given her reaction to questions about returning So it was up to the movie and director Kevin Williamson to put all of those pieces and more together in a way that results in a fun and twisty whodunnit. I suppose that’s what happened, although just about everything surrounding “Stu Macher’s” return that wasn’t Lillard felt more like heightened fan service than justifiable franchise cameos.

Matthew Lillard's Screw-Loose Performance Is My Favorite Thing About Scream 7

In the same way that Matthew Lillard can turn Quentin Tarantino's insults into nothing dust just by being a great person, he can also be the unpredictable spark that makes a movie truly worth watching. (See: both Five Nights at Freddy's movies, though Scream 7 co-star Mckenna Grace was the bright light in that sequel.) And boy oh boy, does he bring the goody-goods here, despite such a limited amount of screentime and movement and everything else.

By and large, Lillard's Scream 7 presence amounted to a handful of red-band 1990s pro wrestling promos, and it's bliss. "Stu" aggressively taunts and threatens Sydney through a series of video calls with non-descript backgrounds, presumably so Lillard could film for it without any visual hints of it being for a Scream movie, and each video is slightly more demented than the last.

If held at knifepoint by Ghostface, I'd quickly name the "Stu" videos as my favorite thing about this latest franchise entry. For all that Neve Campbell and Isabel May deliver as a mother-daughter duo, and as much as I always want to see more from Chad and Mindy, getting to see Lillard put on his maliciously wacky hat again for this role (sort of) can't be topped. My daughter and I giddily grabbed each others arms each time he popped up on Sydney's phone screen, which was only helped him rise above everything else.

Of course, Scream 7's dual-killer ending revealed that Stu isn't actually still alive, and that he's the creation of Ethan Embry's psychiatric hospital worker Marco, under the villainous guidance of Anna Camp's Jessica Bowden. Obviously, that's the biggest bummer in the world for those of us hoping for bizarre miracles — Marco referring to that idea as “stupid” did make me laugh heartily, for all my hoping — but even if Stu isn't real, Lillard's maniacal glee is.

I Don't Really Get Why The Other Cameos Were Necessary, Especially Dewey's

With the news about the various cameos already out there, I was hoping for something truly bananas to happen with them, and wondered if there would be ample de-aging used for flashback sequences. Then, once the Stu videos start up and make it clear that this is all rooted in bad-faith tech, I then shifted my assumptions to thinking that Sydney would start also getting calls from her half-brother Roman and Mrs. Loomis to continue striking at her sanity.

Instead, Laurie Metcalf and Scott Foley's pop-ins are held until just before the big pair of unmaskings in the final act, appearing along with more of Lillard's madcap antics for a lengthier video jumping across all of Sydney's screened devices. Did I cheer loudly when I saw Metcalf? Yes, without a moment of hesitation, but that's not the point.

This video tactic is such a movie moment, and not something even the craftiest serial killer would concoct. Because it's not like Sydney actually thinks she's looking at Nancy or Roman, whose deaths were never in question, so why even go through the trouble of aging up those bodies if the point all along is making Sydney think that Stu might actually have survived?

To that end, the appearance of David Arquette's Dewey Riley is the most mind-boggling. First, he wasn't ever one of the Ghostface killers, despite drawing some occasional suspicion. I realize there may have been other cameos that were attempted without success, but as it stands, Marco's deepfakes are clearly pulled from the points in Sydney's life that led her to write the autobiography that inspired Jessica to kill her husband.

Second, if Marco went so far as to make AI Dewey a thing, then why not use that to call Gale and severly mess with her mind, rather than just jamming it into the end of an otherwise confounding video for Sydney? Sure, I get that the whole movie is all about Sydney and her legacy, and that Dewey was the brother of the person she named her daughter after. But if that's the point, then Rose McGowan's Tatum would have made a lot more sense.

Having Dewey in the mix just felt more like a cheap ploy to tug at the heartstrings, which could feasibly be applied to Marco himself. But that's giving too much credit where I'd prefer to give less.

Also, Why Did Tatum's Moron Boyfriend Ben Let Himself Become A Red Herring?

This gripe isn't technically related to all the cameos, but I still have to bring it up. Sam Rechner's Ben is introduced in a way similar to Billy's arrival through Sydney's window in the first movie, but the way Ben scares Tatum by smacking her in the head just seemed more like a jerk move than a hint that he was the killer. Still a red flag, but not the worst example I guess.

Later in the movie, however, he's 100% set up as a pre-reveal red herring in both Tatum's eyes and the audience's when she sees the AI video program on his laptop, where he's already figured out how to perfectly replicate the "Stu" deepfake. Considering all of the teens are together and fully focused on figuring things out, Ben should have alerted Tatum immediately about what he's doing with the Stu videos.

I mean, it's truly wild that Ben is able to seemingly mimic Marco's videos exactly in such a short time, so I suppose I can understand if he was just on a roll and wanted to show her a finished product before saying anything. But then they leave the bar, which would have completely destroyed any attempt to use that as an alibi for when he started, had she not immediately caught his tech-savvy and dipsh-tty self. He truly set up his own knockout-turned-murder just by being dumb. But hey, three more cheers for Matthew Lillard!

Scream 7 is currently in theaters, and is coupled with the freaky as all f--kity f--k trailer for André Øvredal’s upcoming horror movie Passenger. It’s always a good year to be a horror fan.