Scream 7 is the latest in the Scream franchise. I honestly don’t have much to say about this one. It was a pretty straight forward movie with very little “new” going for it. They brought Sydney back, and made sure to mention many times how she wasn’t in the last film. I feel like that’s about as meta as the movie decided to be. Instead of satirizing other movies, this one satirizes obsessed fans and AI? But you don’t even realize that until the literal end of the film. Instead, you get a pretty basic story where a masked killer is killing kids for seemingly no reason. Remember when Scream was about making fun of slasher movies and not playing it straight. Well, this one plays it pretty straight. Personally, I never really cared about watching Sydney play protective parent. Didn’t she kind of already do that in Five? This one felt redundant, in that sense. It’s fine as a basic slasher movie, but Scream was never supposed to be a basic slasher. I know this isn’t the end of the franchise because studios can’t let big names go but… Maybe it should be?

Mortal Kombat is a 1995 movie based on the video game of the same name. I can’t argue with the reviewers that the movie really doesn’t have much story. It tries to introduce and give background to the main characters, but it’s all really minor. Sonya is chasing Kano, Johnny is tricked, and Liu is looking to avenge the death of his brother. Why do they team up? There really isn’t any reason. Proximity? Because Rayden keeps talking to them together and telling them that they three are humanity’s last hope? I guess that’s a good a reason as any. The fights, on the other hand, are clearly well done and thought out. As much as I loved the new Mortal Kombat’s video game accurate fights, I feel like this movie had much better fights. It actually felt like real fighting and not mimicking the video game. The reviews mention the location shots as another positive but they didn’t really add a lot for me. They were nice, I guess. The acting… is a bit of a mixed bag. There’s a lot of memorable lines in the movie, but I won’t say any of the actors of our main group stands out. Liu is fine. Sonya is struggling, but I don’t think she got a good script. Johnny was also fine. Rayden was funny, but also didn’t particularly feel like Rayden. More like Conner McCloud with lightning powers. Kano was fine, but his role was pretty short. Shang Tsung had a great voice for the role, but I think his acting was a bit over the top, even for a video game movie. Kitana was completely forgettable. So much so that I forgot she was in the film. While I love Mortal Kombat (Techno Syndrome), I do think it was overplayed in the movie. It’s played no less than four times. That’s a lot for any singular song in a movie. A lot of the special effects really don’t live up. Goro, Reptile, and anything CGI was pretty bad. Overall, I don’t think the movie is horrible. If what you like about Mortal Kombat is the fighting, then this movie is perfect. But if you need a little more story to get you into it, the newer Mortal Kombat reboot movie would be more up your alley.