Anna Camp

Anna Camp often plays the woman who has decided how everybody else should behave. Aubrey Posen, the perfectionist a cappella leader in Pitch Perfect (2012), gives her comic timing a useful job: making that insistence funny. That was her film breakthrough. She had already found a more threatening use for such certainty as Sarah Newlin in True Blood (2009–2014). These parts suit her, though they also help explain how narrow the casting can become.

The Help (2011), with Camp as Jolene French, offers less evidence of what distinguishes her. Tate Taylor's drama is worth an evening for Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer, who supply much of its feeling. We are less convinced by a script that gives its white heroine too much credit and its audience too much comfort. It is an ensemble credit, rather than our recommendation for Camp herself.

Scream 7 (2026) is a more frustrating use of her. Kevin Williamson's film puts her Jessica Bowden among the suspects surrounding Isabel May's Tatum, then gives those suspects little beyond costumes and grudges. We were irritated by how little Camp and the others were given to play, because the script's evenly distributed suspicion makes them feel interchangeable. Neve Campbell gets to show Sidney's fear through checking doors and choosing where to sit; the surrounding cast need similarly specific behaviour. The failure belongs to the writing, and it would be unfair to treat this thinly drawn part as evidence that Camp has little else to offer.

She has spoken about wanting to move beyond uptight roles, and the wish is understandable. Moving between musical comedy and thrillers does not, by itself, prevent the same sort of woman turning up in different clothes. Her recurring collaborators include director-producer Elizabeth Banks and co-star Anna Kendrick; that is company in which her comic timing has room to work. We would start with Pitch Perfect for the humour and ensemble chemistry. Another part defined chiefly by how suspicious she looks can wait.