5 Best Movies to Watch This Weekend (May 29-31): ‘Scream 7,’ ‘The Moment’ and More

Franchises never die, especially ones that make as much money as Scream does. The post-modern horror series has been sequelized, remade as a TV series, and rebooted, and it’s more popular than ever. The latest sequel, Scream 7, brings back the original film’s screenwriter, Kevin Williamson, who directs fellow OG Neve Campbell as the very unlucky Sidney Prescott, who once again has to deal with several Ghostfaces making her life miserable.

This time around, Sidney has to defend her teenage daughter, Tatum (Isabel May), from being stalked and murdered. This Ghostface isn’t shy about revealing their identity and uses deepfake technology to mimic past killers like Stu Macher (Matthew Lillard) and Nancy Loomis (Laurie Metcalf). But who is this Ghostface, and what do they want from Sidney? Scream 7 does a decent job of keeping you guessing until the very end and has an adequate amount of gory kills to keep horror fans entertained.

The summer of 2024 already seems like ancient history, but for many, it was defined by one word: brat. “Brat Summer” was in full swing thanks to English pop singer Charli XCX, who finally escaped the dreaded Khia Asylum thanks to the success of her sixth studio album, also called brat. Charli lampoons that moment, and the greedy hangers-on and corporate sponsors who want a piece of the brat action, in the amusing wink-wink mockumentary, The Moment.

With her album peaking in cultural relevance, all Charli wants to do is finish her tour, rest and move on. But there’s money to be made in selling the “brat” brand, and director Johannes Godwin (Alexander Skarsgård) wants to cash in. He pushes her to star in a family-friendly concert film for Amazon that could make her seem like a sell-out, but the lucrative money being offered — and Charli’s escalating exhaustion — could be too powerful to ignore.

Diane’s (Allison Janney) husband of 24 years just died, so forgive her if she seems a little cranky. It doesn’t help matters that her son is abroad working and sends his assistant, Jamie (Andrew Rannells), to help his mother with the funeral arrangements. And since Diane has no real friends, Jamie is all she’s got right now, whether she likes it or not.

The new drama Miss You, Love You throws together two characters who are strangers to each other and to us. But as the movie progresses, they get to know one another and realize they’re kinda alike. Both feel the absence of family members they still love and have to cope with being on their own. Janney’s always a reliable supporting actress, but this movie offers her a rare leading role that lets her showcase all the range and black humor that won her an Oscar for I, Tonya. Her Diane is prickly and not all that likable, but like many of us, she carries on because she has no other choice.

You don’t have to go too far to contact an alien lifeform in the film Descendent, which sees its main protagonist have a close encounter of the third kind right in his own backyard. Late one night, security guard Sean (Ross Marquand) climbs up on his roof late at night to fix a broken light bulb when he sees a UFO in the sky. A bright white light knocks him out, and the next thing he knows, he’s in the hospital. His wife thinks he just hallucinated the encounter, but how can anyone explain the strange visions Sean experiences afterward or his new abilities to hear voices from far away? 

Descendent is a thriller that keeps you on your toes by never really clarifying what’s happening to Sean. There’s enough evidence to suggest that Sean is simply stressed out about his low-paying job and unborn child, but Sean sure is convinced he saw some aliens. In contrast to big-budget alien invasion epics like Independence Day and Battleship, Descendent is cheaper, quieter and a whole lot creepier.

The Mary Shelley renaissance continues! Just months after Netflix unleashed Guillermo del Toro’s lush, romantic take on the author’s famous novel, Frankenstein, Warner Bros. and director Maggie Gyllenhaal unveiled their feminist version of the well-known story. As you can guess from the title, it focuses less on the creature (called Frank here and played by Christian Bale) and more on his would-be bride, Ida (recent Oscar winner Jessie Buckley). After she falls down a flight of stairs and dies, Ida is revived by a not-so-mad doctor, Cornelia Euphronious (Annette Bening), so Frank can have a companion. But instead of living happily ever after, these two resurrected lovebirds decide to embark on a violent crime spree that garners the unwelcome attention of the police and the Chicago mob. 

The Bride! is a folly — it’s messy, tonally inconsistent and at times embarrassingly naive. But it’s also completely unique; there’s nothing quite like it out there, and thank goodness for that. The movie is the equivalent of watching a talented artist throw everything at the screen to see if it works, and, to Gyllenhaal’s credit, some of it does. The Bonnie and Clyde-ization of these two characters works, as does the steampunk look that Ida and Frank sport throughout the picture. Rejected by critics and moviegoers this past February, The Bride! is a future cult classic in the making, so if you see it now, you can say you were a fan before it was cool.