The Deeper Meaning of the Scream Movies

You can watch my video here.

We no longer believe in monsters. But we didn’t get rid of them. They just made their way into our cinemas, the cathedrals of the 20th century. People congregate in these buildings at particular times to have a shared experience of something beyond. Stories told by light passing through stained celluloid. The monsters kept us coming. The scary ones, at least. But they were hard to come by. For every monster that worked, countless didn’t. And so, unable to rely on fresh ideas with the potential to flop, film studios doubled down on the only way to guarantee success.

Sequels. Remakes. Sequels to remakes. On and on it went until every ounce of cultural cachet had been drained from our monsters. Audiences were getting tired. Perhaps horror movies had run their course. Perhaps it was time to hang up the mask and move on. But then, in December 1996, there was Scream. Scream writer Kevin Williamson, recounts the lightbulb moment that birthed this landmark film…

Kevin Williamson: “I got the idea from watching a Barbara Walters special on the Gainsville murders. I was broke, house-sitting for a friend to pay him back for money he’d lent me for groceries, and I was scaring the hell out of myself. I thought I heard a noise. I walked the house with a butcher knife and a phone and called a friend while I searched the place. We got into this huge discussion, testing each other on horror movies. And that’s how Scream was born.”

(Robb, B. J. (2022). Screams & Nightmares: The Films of Wes Craven. Birlinn Ltd.)

Sound familiar?

Ghostface: “What’s your favourite scary movie?”

(Scream, 1996)

The opening scene is the DNA of Scream. It lays the groundwork for everything to come. Casey Becker, played by Drew Barrymore, is plunged into a home invasion nightmare. She’s told the only way to get out is to play a game. Horror movie trivia. But she gets a question wrong. Her boyfriend is slaughtered in front of her. She makes a dash for it, just as her parents pull into the driveway. The killer catches her and stabs her. She fights back, coming tantalisingly close to escape. But because of her neck injuries, the one thing she can’t do is the one thing she needs to do. The title of the movie. The killer closes in. She discovers its identity but we don’t. And we’ll be left trying to figure it out until the third act. Casey’s parents find their home in disarray. And then they find the body of their daughter. Now we hear a scream.

This 13 minute sequence is an entire operatic tragedy in itself. It made a bold statement to seasoned horror fans and newcomers alike. This isn’t just a horror movie. This is a horror movie in which the characters know about horror movies.

It wasn’t the first. Even Scream’s director Wes Craven had previously made Wes Craven’s New Nightmare, lamenting the studio overreach that milked dry his own creation. Freddy Krueger, the nightmare on Elm Street.

But Scream did something fresh. Most of the franchise is situated in the fictional but entirely believable town of Woodsboro. A comfortable but disenchanted setting, populated with cineliterate kids. The young audiences of the 1990s could see themselves in these characters and at this school.

Like much of the modern world, the sleepy small town of Woodsboro was crying out for something more. A mythology. Something to give its people meaning. Something that could be retold, re-enacted and adapted for generations to come with the regularity of a religious festival. It needed a story with a monster and a hero. And in the absence of anything better, it got one, through a sequence of brutal murders.

Marnie Cooper: “Don’t we hear enough about this story every year?”

Jenny Randall: “At least Woodsboro’s known for something.”

(Scream 4, 2011)

But unlike the horror franchises that came before, the terror of Woodsboro didn’t come in the form of a monster. It came in the form of an idea. Ghostface.

GHOSTFACE

Many people have been Ghostface. Men and women of different ages. Ghostface is a mantle which gets picked up, passed on or stolen. Those who play the part usually die, but the idea lives on. So what is Ghostface? At its most basic level; it’s a costume, a voice and a relentless bloodlust pursued through a knife.

The most crucial component, the mask, dates back to 1991, when Fun World employee Brigitte Sleiertin was asked to create a new Halloween costume. She developed this now iconic design; ‘The Peanut-Eyed Ghost’. As fate would have it, one of these masks ended up in a house that was used for a Scream location scout. Soon, the rights were obtained, and Fun World licensing director R. J. Torbert gave it the name ‘Ghostface’. He said it had the appearance of a ‘ghost in pain’.

And this is vital. Before Scream, killers in slasher movies were designed to look scary. But Ghostface, first and foremost, isn’t scary. It’s scared. It’s a screaming face, white with terror, expressions simplified to the purest depiction of melancholic dread. When Ghostface kills, it acts as a mirror, reflecting the fear of its victims back at them. And so they die looking much like Ghostface themselves. In the unassuming town of Woodsboro, in which there’s little to be afraid of, Ghostface arises to embody fear itself.

CULTURE AND POP CULTURE

Quick word of warning. From now on we’ll be getting into some spoilers. A big part of the fun of these movies is trying to work out who the killer will be. So if you haven’t seen all 6 films and you want to go in not knowing who the killers are, you’re welcome to leave. Okay. Let’s continue.

The feedback loop of fear between Ghostface and victim which I just mentioned reflects the grander feedback loop of the Scream universe. The interplay between culture and popular culture. Gale Weathers is a cheesy tabloid journalist with a passion for writing.

Gale Weathers: “Has a cheesy tabloid journalist ever won the Pulitzer?”

(Scream, 1996)

Whenever someone gets killed in Woodsboro, she can’t help but pursue the story. She adapts the horrific Woodsboro murders into a series of sensationalised true crime novels, which in turn are adapted into the Stab movies. So the culture generates pop culture. The Woodsboro murders inspire the Stab movies.

But perhaps more disturbingly, the Stab movies feed back into the culture. They keep the idea of Ghostface alive. And the people who decide to put on the mask themselves are movie fanatics, desperate to play a part in the growing mythology.

Mickey Altieri: “It’s a classic case of life imitating art imitating life.”

Student 1: “This is not a hypothetical. It’s not about art. I had biology with that girl; this is reality.”

(Scream 2, 1997)

A superficial reading would say that the Scream franchise is admitting that horror films amplify violence in the real world. And the films do wrestle with that possibility.

Cici Cooper: “You can’t blame real life violence on entertainment.”

Student 2: “Wait a second, yes you can! Don’t you even watch the news?”

Student 3: “Yeah, hello, the killer was wearing a ghost mask, okay? Just like in the movie; it’s directly responsible.”

Cici Cooper: “No it’s not. Movies are not responsible for our actions.”

(Scream 2, 1997)

I think she’s right. The root of the problem is never the movies themselves, but rather the human capacity to produce violence which would remain even if we destroyed every horror movie out there. What the Scream films can’t deny however, is the fact that movies give people ideas. If you watch a movie, any movie, the impact it has upon you is not nothing.

Billy Loomis: “Don’t you blame the movies! Movies don’t create psychos, movies make psychos more creative!”

(Scream, 1996)

What Scream is really exploring is the power of story. Whether in real life, on paper or on screen, the Ghostface story is so potent that people find themselves wanting to inhabit it. Scream 2 begins with a screening of Stab, the film within the film based on the events of Scream 1. And people go wild for it. Dozens of audience members are wearing the ghostface mask, and it’s all meant to be harmless fun. Until it turns out that one of them is a killer, hiding in plain sight. If you’re a wolf, it’s easier to get away with murder when you’re surrounded by sheep dressed like wolves.

THE RULES

Like any genre of storytelling, horror has accumulated a set of conventions or tropes that can be codified into rules. If X happens, Y tends to follow. In the first 3 Scream films, Randy the film nerd acts as a prophet, zealous for the laws of horror. He’s seen enough movies to have a pretty good idea of what the film-loving killers will do next.

Randy Meeks: “There are certain rules that one must abide by in order to successfully survive a horror movie. Number 1: You can never have sex… Number 2: You can never drink or do drugs. It’s a sin, it’s an extension of Number 1. And Number 3: Never ever ever under any circumstances say ‘I’ll be right back’. Because you won’t be back.”

(Scream, 1996)

What he’s picking up on is the strange moralism of killers in slasher movies. They rarely go for innocent people, preferring instead to target wayward teenagers, who are fooling around and abdicating responsibility. That’s not to say that the killers are righteous judges. The filmmakers certainly wouldn’t want us to come away thinking that.

Consider 1978’s Halloween, for instance, the film playing on the TV behind Randy. The killer, Michael Myers, is framed as pure evil. And as Randy observes, he picks off teenagers who are indulging in sex, alcohol and flippant promises. The protagonist, Laurie Strode, is an early example of a ‘final girl’, a term coined by Carol J. Clover in her 1992 book Men, Women, and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film. She is a young, responsible, virginal woman, who survives to the end. And this vindication of the virgin led some to accuse Halloween director John Carpenter of being sex negative, something he vehemently denied.

John Carpenter: “It has been suggested that I was making some kind of moral statement. Believe me, I'm not. In Halloween, I viewed the characters as simply normal teenagers.”

("Syfy – Watch Full Episodes | Imagine Greater". Scifi.com. Archived from the original on February 10, 2006. Retrieved March 7, 2015)

John Carpenter: “…the one girl who is the most sexually uptight just keeps stabbing the guy with a long knife. She’s the most sexually frustrated. She’s the one that killed him. Not because she’s a virgin but because all that repressed energy starts coming out. She uses all those phallic symbols on the guy…She and the killer have a certain link: sexual repression.”

(Jones, Alan (2005). The Rough Guide to Horror Movies. New York: Rough Guides. ISBN 978-1-84353-521-8)

But regardless of what John Carpenter is trying to say or trying not to say with the film, it’s interesting to note that the one teenager who stands a chance against Michael Myers is the one who shows self-control and maturity. As much as we might want to, in our storytelling we can’t seem to separate the hedonistic lifestyle from death and destruction. In fact, whenever you’re watching a horror film and you get to a mad party scene, it’s pretty much guaranteed that someone will die.

Which leads us to the subversive final girl of Scream, Sidney Prescott. In Scream 1, there’s pressure from her boyfriend Billy Loomis and her peers to lose her virginity. But she’s still recovering from the murder of her mother, Maureen Prescott.

Billy Loomis: “I mean you haven’t been the same since… since your mother died.”

Sidney Prescott: “Is your brain leaking? My mom was killed. I can’t believe you’re bringing this up.”

Billy Loomis: “It’s been a year.”

Sidney Prescott: “Tomorrow.”

Billy Loomis: “I think it’s time you got over that.”

(Scream, 1996)

Eventually, Billy manages to win her trust, and they do the deed at Stu Macher’s party. Which means, according to Randy’s rules, Sidney’s name is now on the kill list. And it is.

Stu Macher: “You gave it up. Now you’re no longer a virgin… Now you gotta die. Those are the rules.”

(Scream, 1996)

But through a twisty final showdown, she manages to survive. She gets to be a final girl, even though she had sex. This might be interpreted as an effort on the part of the film to be more sex positive than its predecessors. But it’s not quite that simple. Because who is Billy Loomis? One of the killers. Through deceit, he won Sidney’s trust and gave her a sexual encounter which she instantly came to regret. Scream plays with the conventions and expectations of horror. But that doesn’t mean that within the Scream films, nothing matters or actions don’t have consequences. Far from it.

THE STAR

Horror is especially wired to explore the unnerving reality that much is beyond our control. Because if you make a horror movie, you build a world and you allow a threat to enter into that world. Even the subversive Scream films can’t get away from that. The specifics can be played with. But one thing is certain in every movie. Death is coming. And the protagonist will have to do battle with Ghostface. Call it fate. Call it destiny. Whatever it is and however it arises, it’s inevitable. Every time.

Scream makes this point through the use of a classic horror movie staple. The classroom scene. This is the place where the protagonist is forced to contend with the existence of fate. They can accept it. They can ignore it. They can rail against it. But what they can’t do, is stop it. In the Scream 1 classroom scene, the teacher gives Sidney some ominous words.

Teacher: “Sidney, it would appear to be your turn.”

(Scream, 1996)

What she means that Sidney is up next for questioning by the police. But the deeper meaning is that Sidney is next in line for a Ghostface attack. There it is, that sense of the inevitable. Sidney will have to come to terms with the fact that she is the star of this movie.

Sidney Prescott: “This isn’t a movie.” Billy Loomis: “Sure it is, Sid. It’s all a movie. It’s all one great big movie. Only, you can’t pick your genre.”

(Scream, 1996)

In Scream 2, Sidney is a drama student, playing the part of Cassandra in the college production of ‘Agamemnon’. Her teacher presses her once again on the subject of fate.

Gus Gold: “Cassandra’s one of the great tragic visionaries of literature. She saw it all coming. The wars. The murder. The madness. She knew she was cursed. It was her fate and she embraced it. None of us can avoid our fate, but as an artist, you can honestly face it and fight it.”

(Scream 2, 1997)

So that’s the question. Will Sidney face her fate?

Sidney Prescott: “You know, I knew this was coming. I knew this wasn’t over.”

(Scream 2, 1997)

You wouldn’t wish Sidney’s situation on anyone. And after suffering two movies of Ghostface attacks and the loss of many loved ones, she decides to flee. In Scream 3, we meet her in a secure house in the middle of nowhere. She’s taking calls for California women’s crisis counseling. And it’s precisely her admirable concern for others that draws her back into the danger zone.

In an extraordinary scene, she finds herself on the deserted set of Stab 3, an uncanny recreation of her old house and bedroom. Her personal life is being immortalised on film all around her. And it’s at this moment that Ghostface attacks. From the classroom to the stage to the film set, Sidney is challenged to confront her fate. She can’t run away from Ghostface.

But she’s not in this alone. There’s Dewey Riley. A crime fighter with a big heart. He never ceases to love his sometimes unlovely bride, Gale Weathers. And he acts as a protective big brother towards Sidney, always checking in to see how she’s doing.

Sidney Prescott: “What are you doing here?”

Dewey Riley: “I was worried about you.”

(Scream 2, 1997)

Sidney Prescott: “Hello?"

Dewey Riley: “Hey Sid, it’s me…”

Sidney Prescott: “Dewey?!”

(Scream, 2022)

And Gale herself, for all her flaws, cares deeply about Sidney.

Gale Weathers: “I talked to Sidney… She deserves to have her happy ending”

(Scream VI, 2023)

This is part of what makes Scream unique. The returning central characters are the heart of the franchise. We come back for them. Previous slasher franchises were mainly about the killer. It was the killer who brought the box office returns. You’d go to the sequels to see Jason or Freddy or Michael. But Sidney, Dewey and Gale? We care about them.

FAMILY SECRETS

The studio had obvious financial motives for wanting to make Scream sequels. But Wes Craven was excited by the possibility of being one of the first directors to helm an entire horror trilogy with returning characters.

Kevin Williamson, the writer of Scream 1 and Scream 2, had an idea for Scream 3 that would conclude the story in Woodsboro. But Craven wanted something more expansive. He wanted to take the small-town characters to the vast soundstages of Hollywood and round off the self-referential commentary on the film industry. A new writer, Ehren Kruger, took over. In the wake of the Columbine High School massacre of 1999, the studio decided that Scream 3 should have less violence and more jokes at Hollywood’s expense.

Randy Meeks: “True trilogies are all about going back to the beginning, and discovering something that wasn’t true from the get go… Godfather, Jedi… all revealed something that we thought was true, that wasn’t true… Whatever you think you know about the past, forget it. The past is not at rest. Any sins you think were committed in the past are about to break out and destroy you.”

(Scream 3, 2000)

Thanks Randy. And thus is it Scream 3 that fleshes out Sidney’s backstory. We learn that her mother, Maureen Prescott, was an aspiring actress with the stage name Rina Reynolds. In a sickening moment, film producer John Milton discloses details about what happened to her.

John Milton: “I was well known for my parties. Rina knew what they were. It was for girls like her to meet men. Men who could get them parts, if they made the right impression. Nothing happened to her that she didn’t invite in one way or another. No matter what she said afterwards.”

Gale Weathers: “Are you saying she-“

John Milton: “I’m saying things got out of hand. Maybe they did take advantage of her. You know, maybe the sad truth is, this is not the city for innocence. No charges were brought. And the bottom line is, Rina Reynolds wouldn’t play by the rules. You wanna get ahead in Hollywood? You gotta play the game.”

(Scream 3, 2000)

Scream 3 came out 17 years before #MeToo. And let’s not forget that Harvey Weinstein himself was involved in its production. This devastating account of the treatment of a young actress at the hands of powerful men is all too familiar. And that is where the film takes us. Down into the seedy underbelly of this Hollywood producer’s mansion, in which there is a sealed screening room chamber. This is the place where Maureen Prescott was exploited. We’re not shown any flashbacks to the incident. It’s all implied. This is the real horror of Scream 3. Maybe movies don’t produce criminals. But there are certainly criminals who produce movies.

Roman Bridger: “Here he is (John Milton). The man who gave away your mother’s innocence… She never recovered from that night. Right here in this room”

(Scream 3, 2000)

Roman Bridger, the killer of Scream 3, is Maureen’s first child. Sidney’s half-brother.

Roman Bridger: “I searched for a mother too, an actress named Rina Reynolds. Tried to find her my whole life… Knocked at her door thinking she would welcome me with open arms. But she had a new life and a new name, Maureen Prescott. You were the only child she claimed, Sidney. She shut me out in the cold forever, her own son.”

(Scream 3, 2000)

This maternal abandonment led him to orchestrate the events of Scream 1.

Roman Bridger: “Seems Maureen, Mom, She really got around. Cotton was one thing. Everybody knew about that. But Billy’s father, that was the key. Your boyfriend didn’t like seeing his daddy in my film too much, he didn’t like it at all. Once I supplied the motivation, all the kid needed was a few pointers.”

(Scream 3, 2000)

Billy Loomis: “Your s*** mother was f****** my father, and she’s the reason my mom moved out and abandoned me. Maternal abandonment causes serious deviant behaviours…”

(Scream, 1996)

And thus Ghostface is born. The Gale Weathers novels are born. The stab movies are born. Round and round it goes. The feedback loop of tragedy and trauma. For Scream fans, one of the more uncomfortable aspects of the series is the apparent victim blaming of Maureen Prescott. We’re told she had a string of romantic affairs later in life, and most of the Woodsboro killings are framed as the fallout of those affairs. So what’s going on there? Is she being blamed for everything?

The franchise could have used more tact in discussing the darker themes of sexual abuse. But in terms of the story, I think the criticism often misses something. Yes, Maureen Prescott led a promiscuous lifestyle later in life. And that is shown to have had negative consequences. But according to Scream 3, the key factor in the breakdown of her family was the abuse she suffered at the hands of Hollywood. The people who place the blame solely at Maureen Prescott’s feet for the harm that befell her and her family are almost always the killers. The villains. They’re the ones who do the victim blaming.

It takes multiple people, some well intentioned, some not, to create and enable the Ghostface mythos. Ghostface is birthed by the collapse of an entire family. And caught in the centre of the storm is Maureen’s daughter, Sidney Prescott.

Roman Bridger: “Introducing Sidney, the victim. Sidney, the survivor. Sidney, the star.”

(Scream 3, 2000)

COMPETITIVE VICTIMHOOD

Another constant challenge for Sidney is the public attention and scrutiny. Throughout the franchise, she is disbelieved, accused of seeking the spotlight and envied for being the star, even though it’s something she never asked for.

School bully 1: “She was never attacked; I think she made it all up.

School bully 2: “Why would she lie about it?”

School bully 1: “For attention. The girl has some serious issues.”

(Scream, 1996)

Murphy: “It’s really weird, isn’t it? To think this fuss is all because of you [Sidney]! I mean, not directly.”

(Scream 2, 1997)

Ghostface: “It was always all about poor sweet Sidney sucking up all the oxygen.”

(Scream VI, 2023)

Scream 4 is the only time Sidney voluntarily goes public with her traumatic life story. She’s written a book called ‘Out of Darkness’. Here she is, reading an extract.

Sidney Prescott: “I began to believe myself that that was all I was, a victim. And that was unacceptable to me. So I sat down and began to write a new role that would be my own. A role for a woman who could leave the walls of fear behind and step out into the sunlight. Out of darkness.”

(Scream 4, 2011)

Sidney has come through the darkness and out the other side. But how? We get a hint during a conversation with her cousin, Jill Roberts.

Sidney Prescott: “What I do is I try not to think about me… I have people I care about. I focus on them.”

(Scream 4, 2011)

This is Sidney’s hard-won wisdom shining though. She endures by focusing on others. She never seeks to use her status for selfish gain, much to the bewilderment of her cynical publicist.

Rebecca Walters: “Accept your situation. You’re a victim. For life. So embrace it. Use it… And a lucky break like this! I’m talking 100% increase in sales. Minimum. That’s maybe a million more people get your message and you get a tonne more cheques. Win win.”

Sidney Prescott: “I won’t be needing you anymore.”

(Scream 4, 2011)

Sidney is absolutely mortified by her publicist’s corporate, instrumental view of the world. But as for her cousin Jill, not so much. Jill is one of the killers in Scream 4. But ultimately, she doesn’t want to be Ghostface. She wants to be Sidney.

Jill Roberts: “This has never been about killing you. It’s about becoming you… You had your 15 minutes, now I want mine!”

(Scream 4, 2011)

In what is, for me, one of the most disturbing scenes in the franchise, we see Jill enacting her masterplan. She stabs Sidney, and frames Trevor. Then she proceeds to inflict wounds on herself in spectacular fashion. These are the lengths she will go to. She lies down next to Sidney’s body and waits for the police. She has set everything up such that the police will instantly view her as an innocent victim. A new Sidney.

In ancient times, people didn’t want to be seen as the victim. Certainly people in power. Because victims are weak, surely. By definition, they are worse off. But then Christianity came along. In Christianity, the Son of God voluntarily becomes the victim on the cross in self-sacrificial love. He gained the victory by becoming the victim. It’s a radical inversion of power. Whether you believe it or not, our culture has been meditating on that story for centuries. And it has profoundly shaped our view of the world. The Romans would look at the crucifixion of Christ and say that glory resides in the Roman centurion. The one inflicting the violence. But now, in our Post-Christian culture, we see glory in the one who’s on the receiving end of the violence. The victim. That’s a seismic shift.

Many people really have been victims. Like Sidney herself; been through the most horrendous suffering and abuse at the hands of others. But there are some people, like Jill, who cynically see the cultural cachet that can be gained in our current time if you are identified as the victim, if people see you as the victim.

Jill Roberts: “We all live in public now. We’re all on the Internet. How do you think people become famous anymore? …You’ve just gotta have f***** up s*** happen to you.”

(Scream 4, 2011)

Jill plays the victim card when it isn’t hers to play. She uses deception to become as pitied and admired as Sidney in the public eye. This makes Scream 4 an incisive commentary on our culture of competitive victimhood, and how it has been supercharged by social media. Nowadays, people will fight mercilessly for victim status. And this makes life even harder for the actual victims.

Remarkably, Sidney survives to bring about yet another victory and Jill is defeated inside the hospital. But in a genius storytelling move, the camera cuts back to the world outside the hospital. The news reporters don’t yet know what we know about Jill. We hear their reports, honouring the new victim. The new survivor. The new star. Jill Roberts. The disturbing thing about Jill’s masterplan is that it very nearly worked.

Reporter: “Jill Roberts of Woodsboro, a girl who’s lifted all our spirits tonight. An American hero, right out of the movies.”

(Scream 4, 2011)

And that’s it. The ending of Scream 4. Wes Craven’s final film before his death in 2015. That’s what he left us with.

THE SCREAM CANON

Kevin Williamson had plans for a second Scream trilogy. The main reason it fell through is that Scream 4 underperformed at the box office. Williamson turned his attention to other projects, including the TV series The Following, based on his original idea for Scream 3 before he was replaced by writer Ehren Kruger.

Whilst we’re on the subject of Scream-adjacent media, the Scary Movie films had been riding the wave of success created by Scream, with the first coming out in 2000 and the fifth coming out in 2013. These parody films try to do for the slasher genre what Airplane! did for disaster movies. I'm not a fan of Scary Movie. For me, Scream itself is a better parody of the horror genre. And it even manages to be good horror in its own right.

2015 saw the premiere of the Scream TV series, which arguably attempted to reboot the Scream franchise. Wes Craven was even in line to direct the first episode, but he turned it down. Much of the series’ self-referential commentary is driven by the fact that the slasher genre doesn’t typically lend itself to television.

Noah Foster: “You can’t do a slasher movie as a TV series. Well, think about it. You know, girl and her friends arrive at the dance, the camp, the deserted town, whatever. Killer takes them out one by one. Ninety minutes later the sun comes up as survivor girl’s sitting in the back of the ambulance watching her friends’ bodies being wheeled past. Slasher movies burn bright and fast. TV needs to stretch things out.”

(Scream: The TV Series S01E01, 2015)

People didn’t take to the redesigned Ghostface mask, including Craven himself. The original, it seems, is unimprovable. Scream Season 3 formed yet another reboot, with brand new characters, and the original mask restored.

It was in 2022 that a fifth Scream instalment was finally released. An actual canonical Scream movie made after the death of Wes Craven. Created by the team behind the horror comedy Ready or Not and executive produced by Kevin Williamson, it was given the title ‘Scream’. And that’s crucial. Scream 2022 is a requel. Allow Randy’s niece to explain.

Mindy Meeks-Martin: “New main characters, yes, but supported by and related to legacy characters. Not quite a reboot, not quite a sequel. Like the new Halloween, Saw, Terminator, Jurassic Park, Ghostbusters…”

(Scream, 2022)

Scream 5, as we’ll call it, is a smart commentary on the nature of fandom. The killers are fans of the Stab franchise, and they feel utterly betrayed by the apparently woeful cinematic offering of Stab 8. And who made Stab 8?

Mindy Meeks-Martin: “Remember the Stab movie that came out last year?”

Liv McKenzie: “Oh yeah, the one the Knives Out guy directed, right? You know I actually really liked that one.”

Mindy Meeks-Martin: Of course you did, you have terrible taste.”

Liv McKenzie: “I hate you.”

(Scream, 2022)

Of course, they’re referring to director Rian Johnson, who made the most divisive Star Wars movie of all time. Episode 8, The Last Jedi. That film marked a sharp increase in the animosity of film discussion. Many described it as the film that ruined their childhood. There were heated debates about Disney smuggling certain ideologies into their entertainment and throwing beloved characters under the bus. Movies became the battleground on which the culture war was being fought. Just as Gale Weathers predicted in Scream 3.

Tom Prinze (to Gale): “Watch your show all the time. You’re so right. Pop culture is the politics of the 21st century.”

Gale Weathers: “Thank you.”

(Scream 3, 2000)

Scream 5 had to introduce a new star. Someone to pick up the torch. The first 4 Scream films begin with a Ghostface attack, followed by Sidney Prescott. Scream 5 goes to a new character. Sam Carpenter. The implication is that Sam is the new Sidney. There’s a rather wonderful moment where Sidney offers some advice, but Sam ignores it.

Sidney Prescott: “I tried running too. It doesn’t work. It always follows.”

Samantha Carpenter: “All due respect, that’s your life, not mine.”

(Scream, 2022)

This is nicely paid-off at the end.

Samantha Carpenter: “You were right. About not running.”

Sidney Prescott: “Sorry about that.”

(Scream, 2022)

But then there’s Dewey. You could say that Scream 5 does to Dewey what The Last Jedi does to Luke Skywalker. The grizzled former hero, now living in exile and unemployment after failing his loved ones. Until he makes a final return and dies in battle.

David Arquette and Courtney Cox really were married at the time of Scream 4, but not at the time of Scream 5. As reflected by their characters, Dewey and Gale, who are divorced in Scream 5. So that’s an extra layer of meta. But the death of Dewey marks an important change in the franchise. Something of what his character represents is lost. And I don’t know if we’ll get it back.

GHOSTFACE AS HERO

Remember how Scream 4 explored the possibility of Ghostface becoming the victim? Well Scream 5 and 6 explore the possibility of the victim becoming Ghostface. Sam Carpenter is the daughter of Billy Loomis, the original killer from Scream 1. She’s haunted by visions of him, tempting her to commit violence. In the climax of Scream 5, she launches a frenzied counterattack against her ex-boyfriend Ritchie, one of the killers. This goes well beyond self-defence. She almost seems to enjoy it.

Scream VI pushes this even further. At the start of the film, Sam seeks therapy to process her dark desires. The Internet is swirling with conspiracy theories about her. She’s fiercely protective of her half-sister Tara. By the end of the film, it seems that almost anything is justified in eliminating the killers. Tara stabs Ethan in the mouth and tells him he’ll die a virgin. Shortly after, Sam unleashes fury on Detective Bailey. She even wears the Ghostface costume as she slices and dices. That’s new. Or is it?

It is true that Sidney wears the costume in Scream 1 in order to evade Billy. But she immediately sheds the costume onto the floor, almost in disgust. For Sidney, Ghostface is never justified. Ghostface must always be defeated.

For Sam, it’s okay to don the Ghostface costume for the purpose of cutting the toxic people out of her life. Of course, the people she kills are terrible people. They’re killers. But the ease with which she enacts her brutal revenge? The fact that Tara’s okay with it, and they have a tender interaction straight afterwards… Somehow, it doesn’t sit right. I don’t think Wes Craven would have done that.

I suppose that if Scream 4 is about people competing to be the victim, the logical next step is people competing to be Ghostface. That was the plan for Kevin Williamson’s second trilogy. Jill Roberts was going to live on into Scream 5 and go to college, only to be hunted by a killer herself. I think the problem is that we’re meant to sympathise with Sam. She’s a person with serial killer tendencies, who’s become increasingly willing to put them into practice. But we’re meant to sympathise with her.

This does reflect a broader shift in the storytelling of today. We’re deconstructing the categories of hero and villain. It’s now okay for heroes to draw some power from the dark side. And the modern ‘villain’ is often just someone who didn’t get enough hugs as a kid, someone who is misunderstood. For a while, it was the horror genre that retained a refreshing lack of moral ambiguity. But maybe that won’t be the case for much longer.

Now, look. I get it. Scream VI, perhaps, is meant to be cathartic, like a Quentin Tarantino movie. We’re watching someone get revenge against her oppressors in spectacular fashion. But it’s worth noting that Wes Craven himself walked out of a screening of Reservoir Dogs.

Wes Craven: ”…I walked out of a screening of [Quentin Tarantino’s] Reservoir Dogs because I felt at a certain point that the filmmaker was just getting off on the violence and that it was being treated as something amusing, which it isn’t to me.”

(Robb, B. J. (2022). Screams & Nightmares: The Films of Wes Craven. Birlinn Ltd.)

The filmmakers of Scream VI clearly have a high regard for Wes Craven. I don’t doubt that for a second. Some of their set-pieces are aesthetically among the best in the franchise. But what they’ve missed is Wes Craven’s strong moral core. In Scream 1 to 4, all the murder scenes have a weight and a seriousness to them. There is good and there is evil and they are distinguishable. But now, all bets are off. In more ways than one for Scream 7, it seems; Melissa Barrera was sacked from the project and Director Christopher Landon walked away.

Who knows what they’ll do with it? Who knows the original plan for Scream 7? But there’s an inkling that if they’d continued that thread, maybe Sam Carpenter would have been framed as a Joker-esque character. In Joker, you’re watching a man descend into darkness. You completely understand why it happens and yet you are still utterly repulsed and disturbed by what he becomes. Maybe that’s what they were planning to do with Sam. I could get on board with that. It’s naming evil as evil. But the way things are left with Scream VI, which is all we have to go on at the moment, I find it uncomfortable.

IN CLOSING

So there we go. The Scream franchise. The original trilogy captured the zeitgeist of the 1990s and the anxiety surrounding the arrival of the new Millenium. It put its finger on the pervasive influence of a film industry living on borrowed time.

Scream 4 reflected the rise of competitive victimhood amplified by social media in our Post-Christian culture. And Screams 5 and 6 explore the possibility of conflating Ghostface with the protagonist.

I think these films help us to make sense of the past three decades. They show us the power of an idea. The power of story. And at their best, they show us the power of endurance, love and friendship. The possibility of light at the end of the tunnel.

I’ll leave you with a quote from Wes Craven himself.

Wes Craven: “I think what Scream did was showcase quite intelligent characters who talked about real world names and places. In the past, horror films were set in a kind of never-never land where everything was kind of made up. Suddenly, Scream came along and thrust it all into the real world in a very interesting way. In the Scream films we’ve created a much more complex human story. I don’t think we’ve even begun to mine this approach to the genre.”

(Robb, B. J. (2022). Screams & Nightmares: The Films of Wes Craven. Birlinn Ltd.)