I SCREAM, You SCREAM: A SCREAM Retrospective!
It’s hard to predict what film franchises will end up having legs.
Take, for instance, the cultural impact of THE TERMINATOR. Every single dad and dude born between 1974 and 1994 have a T2 Arnold impression in their back pocket, and everybody on the planet, including probably the Sentinelese, know the line “I’ll be back”. But, given that…there hasn’t been a big push in awhile for more Terminator movies, right? They’ve made six since 1984, with the most recent being released in 2019. But, there’s a decent chance you forgot all about that. Same goes for major cultural touchstones such as MEN IN BLACK, VACATION, FANTASTIC BEASTS and DIE HARD. You’ve heard of all of them! You’ve probably seen and loved at least one entry! But it’s hard to imagine a new one showing up in theatres and hitting it big with a new generation now.
But there’s one Gen-X franchise that appears to be hanging on and going strong.
I speak, of course, of SCREAM, everybody’s favorite meta-gory slasher franchise. The seventh entry in the series just dropped, and is making a splash, implying that we’re nowhere close to seeing the last of Ghostface, Sidney Bristow, nor any of their allies or victims. This is an astounding achievement, considering the fact that it could have just as easily become an artifact of the 90s (“remember that creepy movie that kept commenting on how it was a creepy movie?”). But, then, considering it was constantly in tribute to long-running franchises like HALLOWEEN, A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, and FRIDAY THE 13TH, maybe it shouldn’t have been surprising that it was able to survive as long as them as well.
Anyway, since SCREAM 7 is now out to the public, this felt like the perfect time to work through the seven theatrical installments* and track how we reached this point, as well as highlight the franchise’s unique creative peaks and valleys over the past thirty years.
*Sorry to the three-season MTV series spinoff!
Alright, let’s hop on the cordless phone and talk about our favorite scary movie!
SCREAM (1996)
Starring: David Arquette, Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, Matthew Lillard, Rose McGowan, Skeet Ulrich, Drew Barrymore, Jamie Kennedy
Directed by: Wes Craven
Written by: Kevin Williamson
Released: December 20, 1996
Length: 111 minutes
Meta-commentary in film wasn’t precisely new in 1996. Guys like Kevin Smith and Quentin Tarantino had been making movies about characters who loved talking about movies for years by the time SCREAM hit the theatres. Hell, SCREAM wouldn’t even be Wes Craven’s first stab at doing “meta”; two years prior, he had revived his signature franchise with FREDDY’S NEW NIGHTMARE, a NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET sequel that reinvisioned Freddy Krueger as an actual nightmare villain terrorizing the real Heather Langenkamp, the actress who starred in the original 1984 movie.
So, no, in a post-CLERKS and PULP FICTION world, the idea of movie characters sitting around talking about how movies worked (or didn’t work) wasn’t precisely new. However, where those movies reflected how people conversed about film in real life, I’d argue SCREAM was the first to predict how people would eventually start talking about movies on the internet, and this may be why it’s endured over three decades later.
Consider Randy Meeks (Jamie Kennedy), the video-store employee and horror movie aficionado who lays out all the horror cliches SCREAM will go on to either embrace or reject, depending on the situation. Rarely is he actively having a conversation. No, instead, he’s usually holding court, surrounded by a captive (if skeptical) audience, expounding on the various “rules” that horror characters must follow. He’s not exchanging ideas, per se, he’s sharing his insight and knowledge with the foolish mortals he constantly finds himself amidst. Randy’s famous speech feels fairly indistinguishable from a Reddit post in that regard:
“There are certain rules you must abide by in order to successfully survive a horror movie. For instance, number one: you can never have sex. Big no-no, big no-no [...] sex equals death okay? Number two: you can never drink or do drugs. No sin factor. This is sin. It's an extension of number one. Number three: never, never, ever under any circumstances do you ever say “I'll be right back”, ‘cause you won't be back [...] You push the laws and you end up dead! I'll see you in the kitchen with a knife!”
I think about this when I try to reconcile the fact that this movie from 1996, which stars exclusively twenty-year-old white-hot stars of their time, all of whom make constant references to films from the 70s and 80s, has somehow managed to yield a three-decade-long franchise with a new, next-gen cast of twenty-year-olds all its own. For all intents and purposes, the legacy of the first SCREAM should have been as an artifact of the nineties and nothing more.
But, as it turns out, people like hearing movie characters talk about movies, doubly so when the characters sound like us. And the style in which SCREAM’s characters discuss the HALLOWEEN franchise, or A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET or FRIDAY THE 13TH has been translatable enough across generations that movie fans in their 20s now seem to dig the SCREAM franchise the same way movie fans in their 20s did then. Sometimes, the secret to eternal timeliness is making your characters sound brash, confident, and a little obnoxious.
It also helps that, if someone had stripped all the meta references from Kevin Williamson’s script, I think SCREAM would still have worked. It wouldn’t have taken away from its opening gambit (one itself cribbed from Hitchcock’s PSYCHO) centering a big name (Drew Barrymore, who was prominently featured on the poster) in its opening reel, only to have her viciously wiped off the board by our central killer early on. You wouldn’t have lost the engaging core cast, especially Neve Campbell, who almost single-handedly keeps the movie grounded in reality with a performance that really makes you feel the weight of both the increasing body count and the continuous psychological torture of Ghostface’s vicious antics.
Speaking of Mr. Face, you wouldn’t be losing our main killer, an instantly iconic figure who simultaneously is one of the bloodiest, most ruthless murderers in all of mainstream horror*, and is also kind of a dumbass who, when he’s not getting hit in the head, is prone to just kind of falling over sometimes. It’s also notable that we all exclusively refer to Ghostface as a singular man, even if he’s often several people, and ends up being a female half the time. I think this is a beautiful metaphor for how everyone contains multitudes within them, or something.
*The most brutal kill in this one is probably Rose McGowan getting crushed by a garage door.
Seriously, though, SCREAM is kind of an icky movie! I’m always taken aback at just how bloody everyone is by the end. Matthew Lillard in particular seems to be caked in the stuff, bringing a macabre feel to even his goofiest lines (the most famous being his MVP read of “my mom’s gonna be so mad at me!”). It adds something to the proceedings that, for as silly and borderline-flippant so much of SCREAM seems to be, the violence really does take its toll. Watching Lillard struggle to breath as a result of blood loss begins to make you feel like you’re dying.
Ultimately, I’ve always found SCREAM charming and compelling in its status as an underdog tale. See, back in the day, a movie could end up slowly gaining momentum, and even profitability, off the back of positive word of mouth. In SCREAM’s case, it landed fourth on its opening weekend, behind the live-action remake of 101 DALMATIANS, JERRY MAGUIRE and BEAVIS AND BUTTHEAD DO AMERICA. In 2026, you’d never have heard of SCREAM again, and there’d be bitchy tweets from supposed movie fan accounts saying shit like “SCREAM debuted with a $6 million opening weekend. It cost $15 million to make.”
Thirty years ago, though? Miramax took note of the positive audience exit polls, and decided to pour more money into its marketing. Obviously, this isn’t a strategy that isn’t guaranteed to work every time, but putting eyes on a product of yours that seems to be making people happy seems like a bit of a no-brainer to me. As a result, the movie made $173 million, spawning six sequels and a multi-season anthology TV series. See? Not everything Harvey Weinstein did in the 90s was ghoulish sexual harassment!
Last little tidbit I’ve always found interesting: the first SCREAM kicks off the grand tradition of this horror franchise releasing their entries in the winter (December or February), rather than the fall, where you would presume there would be some capitalization on the Halloween season. It’s a release strategy that makes a certain amount of sense; winter is a dead time for film, and for horror in particular. It just…it just doesn’t seem right, does it? I think it’s because a Halloween costume and mask is so central to Ghostface that his very existence seems to be part and parcel with October 31st. Alas, for the most part, SCREAM exclusively exists in the first quarter of the year.
So, SCREAM became a surprise hit, leading Miramax to fast-track a sequel…
SCREAM 2 (1997)
Starring: David Arquette, Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Jamie Kennedy, Laurie Metcalf, Liev Schreiber, Jada Pinkett, Timothy Olyphant
Directed by: Wes Craven
Written by: Kevin Williamson
Released: December 12, 1997
Length: 120 minutes
SCREAM: THE COLLEGE YEARS!
This time, Sidney finds herself attending Windsor College in Ohio, along with fellow SCREAM 1 survivor Randy, as well as her new boyfriend Derek (Jerry O’Connell). Her hope is to heal and move on from the horrors she endured back in Woodsboro. However, it gets hard to do so when a movie based on those horrors, STAB, is set to be released. And once a sneak preview showing leads to the murders of students Phil (Omar Epps) and Maureen (Jada Pinkett), Sidney’s past continues to haunt her with the arrivals of deputy Dewey and reporter Gail Weathers to Ohio. Oh, and then there’s that guy Sidney accidentally put in jail for the murder of her mother….
What always strikes me about SCREAM 2 is how quickly it was put together. It came out only a couple of days shy of a year after the first SCREAM; when you consider that it took the first movie a few weeks to catch on initially, the sequel arrived in basically a blink of an eye. But, at a glance, there’s no real sign that the movie was rushed. The core cast (at least, those whose characters were alive) all returned, and the dead characters were replaced by a bunch of other names you’ve heard of: Laurie Metcalf, Jada Pinkett, Timothy Olyphant and Sarah Michelle Gellar all participate to various degrees. Craven and Williamson return to direct and write, respectively. All in all, it’s a pretty good culling of talent, considering the turn-around time.
Of course, Williamson had developed ideas for a pair of sequels at the time he was shopping SCREAM around, giving potential buyers the assurance that they’d be buying a whole franchise, not just one movie. So it’s not like a sequel got greenlit and he and Craven just stared at each other going “oh fuck oh fuck now what”. BUT, when one further considers that Williamson’s initial sequel script had to be extensively rewritten sometime in the spring of 1997 after a fucking extra leaked the whole thing on the internet…it’s a miracle that SCREAM 2 is good at all.
And I do think that SCREAM 2 is good, as it mostly threads the obvious issue a sequel to SCREAM presents: how do you escalate the meta? In that sense, it’s a surprising success. The answer to the escalation (what if the SCREAM universe had a SCREAM-esque series itself?) is clever: the premiere of the movie STAB raises a ton of questions about the morality of turning gnarly true crime into teen entertainment fodder, which directly cuts to the heart of Gail Weathers’ entire career (there’s a reason Courtney Cox in particular stands out so much in this one). And, of course, bringing back Randy, the one character who seems to be aware that he’s currently in a movie, always helps facilitate the lampshading inherent to the SCREAM franchise. Who better to explain the futility of sequels than him?
There are also a few really great standout sequences. I thought the actual Ghostface reveal is appropriately dramatic, and the way they tie Laurie Metcalf into the first movie is giddy fun. My favorite sequence in SCREAM 2 occurs during a rehearsal for a college production of The Oresteia. As Sidney marks her way through a claustrophically choreographed stage, surrounded by white-masked players, out pops Ghostface, causing her to panic and collapse. It’s not very really made clear whether this is a hallucination, or if it’s yet another elaborate prank devised by our killer to torment Sidney. Either way, she can’t even seem to exist in neutral spaces, nor enjoy things meant to take her off the extreme familial trauma she’s still navigating. It’s a great way to illustrate the toll this admittedly very silly horror story has taken on our lead over a movie and a half.
The problem is that SCREAM 2 has just never had enough of these kinds of moments for me. It’s all fun and structured in the way that we like our SCREAM movies to be, but it also never quite beats the “inferior sequel” allegations it keeps lobbying at itself. Everyone’s back and doing the thing they did before; Sidney is battling a demon, Randy is popping off about movies, Gail is ghoulishly turning disaster into pulpy entertainment, Dewey is sweet and lovable and a little dumb. You can’t quite shake the feeling that you’ve seen all this before. In this sense, this is the only aspect of the film where the quick turn-around time rears its head. It’s hard to come up with something revolutionary in a couple of months, and even harder when you have to do it again after your original plan gets destroyed. It happens. It’s just kind of a letdown.
Also, not to get into a pedantic argument with the ultimate pedant, but Randy makes a little comment about the original STAR WARS trilogy that has never made a lot of sense to me. One of the running bits of the movie involves Randy and Mickey (Olyphant, one of our soon-to-be-revealed Ghostfaces) arguing over which sequels were technically superior, and Randy seems determined to shoot down any reasonable suggestion. ALIENS? Eye-roll. THE GODFATHER PART 2? Scoffs. Then, at one point, Mickey offers up THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, perhaps the pre-eminent example of the superior sequel. Randy’s response?
“Not a sequel, part of an original planned trilogy.”
….what? How is THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK not a sequel? I think the implication here is that it doesn’t count towards what they’re talking about (a follow-up to a surprise hit), since George Lucas had a whole planned trilogy ready to go from the jump. Now, I’m not even sure I agree with that; if you genuinely believe Lucas had the complete script for STAR WARS 2 ready to go, and it 100% matched what we eventually saw on screen, you’re an idiot. But, even if we just go ahead and agree that STAR WARS was a “planned trilogy”....the second movie is still a sequel. Mickey should have flushed Randy down a toilet right then and there.
(On the other hand, I’m the one arguing about STAR WARS with a now-deceased fictional person from thirty years ago, so now who’s the fucking dork? That’s right, still Randy.)
So, yeah. SCREAM 2 is a weird watch for me. Still, it cannot be overstated how hot Timothy Olyphant is in this. Oh, and Sarah Michelle-Gellar. And Liev Schrieber. Ah, heck, they’re all hot in this. So how bad can it be?
SCREAM 3 (2000)
Starring: David Arquette, Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox Arquette, Patrick Dempsey, Scott Foley, Lance Henriksen, Jenny McCarthy, Emily Mortimer, Parker Posey, Patrick Warburton
Directed by: Wes Craven
Written by: Ehren Kruger
Released: February 4, 2000
Length: 117 minutes
SCREAM GOES TO HOLLYWOOD!
I’ll give SCREAM 3 this: it manages to escalate the “meta-ness” in a logical fashion. The third installment of the franchise asks two core questions. Question one: what if the SCREAM characters started getting directly involved in making a SCREAM…er, STAB movie (in this case, STAB 3: RETURN TO WOODSBORO)? Question two: what are the rules to surviving a trilogy capper, anyway?
Yeah, that second question is always the first thing I think of when it comes to SCREAM 3: it positions itself so hard as the final SCREAM movie, the one where anything goes, and really explores franchise finales. Now, it’s not even the midway point of the franchise. Maybe Randy should have had a rule about that. “Don’t ever declare yourself as the final film! You’re begging for some lazy studio suit to resurrect you from the grave. He could call it the “FRIDAY THE 13TH: THE FINAL CHAPTER Rule”.
Oh, wait, I almost forgot about his EMPIRE STRIKES BACK remark. Why am I helping him? Fuck you, Randy!
Anyway, SCREAM 3 dutifully charts the franchise further and further up its own butthole* by having our core cast arrive in Hollywood under various auspices. Dewey is now an adviser for the new STAB film. Gale is there to speak to a detective about the murders of Cotton Weary and his girlfriend, supposedly by a brand new Ghostface. And Sidney? Sidney’s there to get the truth about her mother once and for all.
*Weirdly, I mean that with love.
Yes, one of the main veins of the third SCREAM movie is the unraveling of Maureen Prescott’s backstory, as we learn that she was briefly a Hollywood actress in the 70s before being raped by John Milton (an always welcome Lance Henriksen), the man who is currently producing…STAB 3 (oh my god!).. The result of this rape becomes crucial to the ultimate Ghostface reveal, which makes the whole movie feel oddly heavy, even as it folds into itself ever further. As you’ve undoubtedly guessed from all that, there’s some angry film industry commentary woven into SCREAM 3’s DNA, about how powerful men in Hollywood use and throw away unassuming women. How the trauma of these violations can carry across generations. Given the franchises’ Miramax funding (and Rose McGowan’s previous role in the first film), it’s shockingly ambitious for a blood-and-guts meta-horror movie.
Given all this, it’s a little rattling to me that, even after watching it twice, SCREAM 3 is…kind of a silly, ever-so-vaguely forgettable movie? Part of the problem is that, at this point in the series, the main conflict wasn’t between Sidney Prescott and the Ghostface du jour. It’s between the movie and you, the audience member. It knows you’ve watched the first two. It knows you’re trying to figure it out the whole time. It knows you’re trying to outsmart it, and a lot of the machinations of the plot are borne from it trying to outsmart you right back. It all ends with a Ghostface reveal (that we’ll talk about in a second) that makes all the narrative sense in the world, but maybe not functional sense (which is why it’s impossible to guess)? There’s apparently a rumor that a second Ghostface reveal was originally in the script before being removed, which…I dunno if it’s true, but I wouldn’t doubt it.
If it sounds like I’m dogging the movie, just know that I still think there’s still lots of good stuff. An action sequence that unfolds on the set of STAB 3 is a giddy highlight, as Ghostface chases Sidney all around a replica of the house in the climax of SCREAM 1 (just writing it out, it’s kind of a perfect ouroboros moment for the franchise, yeah?). I also can never fully disregard a movie with Parker Posey in it, and she really does provide this movie some energy, as the actress portraying Gale Weathers in STAB 3. Finally, had this actually been the final SCREAM movie, I do at least appreciate its killer’s backstory and grand plan bringing the entire “SCREAM mythos” full circle. I’m always a sucker for those kind of ret-conny finale moves.
Speaking of the killer, let’s all give it up for Roman Bridger (Foley), the only person in the entire SCREAM franchise to do all of his Ghostfacing solo! And he did it while directing a huge franchise sequel. He really does put all past and future Ghostfaces to fucking shame. There are some in the future that need to be three people in order to dice up some teenagers. Hey, maybe that’s how you all murder people out in Woodsboro, New York, and somewhere in Ohio. But you’re in Hollywood now, baby! The check’s in the mail, sweetheart! Let’s do lunch sometime!
Oh, and if you thought I was going to wrap this section up without mentioning Courteney Cox’s bangs in this, you’re insane. They’re atrocious, a true sign that the 90s were dead and never coming back.
SCRE4M (2011)
(What? That’s how they write it on the poster.)
Directed by: Wes Craven
Written by: Kevin Williamson
Starring: David Arquette, Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, Emma Roberts, Hayden Panettiere, Anthony Anderson, Adam Croby, Rory Culkin, Alison Brie
Released: April 15, 2011
Length: 111 minutee
SCREAM: THE NEXT GENERATION!
One of the funny things about the SCREAM franchise is how boxed in it often gets by the success (and subsequent formula) of the first movie.
Take SCREAM’s opening scene. It’s probably the first thing most people think of when they think of these movies. I don’t need to ask you to remember Drew Barrymore walking around that suburban kitchen and living room, a white cordless phone pressed to her ear, desperately trying to answer horror movie trivia questions, all the while a Jiffy Pop slowly burns on the stove. It became instantly iconic, not just because of its PSYCHO-eque twist, but because it’s genuinely compelling, throwing a million other horror movies (BLACK CHRISTMAS and WHEN A STRANGER CALLS to name just two) into the pot in order to create something new. Say what you want about SCREAM, it starts with a bang.
So, what happens when you have to create new openings for future installments? How do you up the ante? How do you maintain that thrill and surprise? Well, if you’re SCREAM 2, you can recreate the same trick (kill off young recognizable stars, in this case Jada Pinkett and Omar Epps), but increase the scope (this time, in a packed and rowdy movie theater). In SCREAM 3’s case, you maintain the surprise by knocking off not a new hot young thing, but an established character; bye-bye, Cotton!
Then, if you’re SCREAM 4, you just…kinda just keep pulling the rug out, over and over.
This is where the belated fourth installment immediately gets into trouble, by opening with my least favorite first scene in all of SCREAM-dom. I think the initial idea of “the opening scene is actually just the opening scene of a crappy STAB sequel” is okay; it at least keeps in theme with the meta-ness inherent to the franchise. But the second reveal of “and this scene of people watching STAB 6 is actually STAB 7” always strikes me as really annoying and exhausting. It doesn’t help that the “STAB 7” scene, with Anna Paquin and Kristen Bell expressing their hatred for cutesy meta-openings, is really fucking bad. Like, I know the idea is that they’re intentionally playing bad actors doing a crappy scene in a movie, but it’s not funny, and the two come off really awful in it. It’s a catastrophic start for a sequel that needed to be really good to justify its late existence.
The rest of SCREAM 4 isn’t all that bad. We get the long-awaited return of our core SCREAM veterans; Dewey Riley and Gale Weathers are now married, although that union gets strained by Gale’s pursuit of a new set of murders that have popped up in Woodsboro (and Dewey’s hot blonde partner isn’t helping things either). Sidney is now a successful author, returning to Woodsboro just in time for (hold for anticipation) a new Ghostface to arrive to torture her. You’d think Sidney would have just left the hometown off the book tour, but, alas.
We’re also introduced to a new crop of young Woodsboro teenagers to go up against Ghostface. We meet Jill Roberts (Emma Roberts*), Sidney’s heretofore-unmentioned cousin, as well as Kirby Reed (Hayden Panettiere), her best friend and the biggest horror fanatic since Randy Meeks. Speaking of Randy, we kind of get two in this one: Charlie Walker (Rory Culkin) and Robbie Mercer (Eric Knudsen), live-streamers who host a STAB-A-Thon film festival every year. Also, Sidney’s been saddled with an annoying, confrontational publicist, Rebecca Walters (Alison Brie). Any one of these new characters could be our new killer. In fact, one of them is! Who will it be???
*Hey, maybe they’re related!
The other weird thing about SCREAM 4 is that it decides its whole meta-thing is going to be a commentary on remakes; Sidney’s big line at the end is to see “You don’t fuck with the original!” When it’s Kirby’s turn to play movie trivia over the phone with Ghostface, her big last-chance question is regarding recent horror remakes (to win, she proceeds to rattle off at least a dozen then-recent ones). Charlie goes on a big rant about the recent glut of remakes. This movie has opinions about horror remakes and, in its defense, it really was an epidemic in the early 2010’s.
But, like…SCREAM 4 isn’t a remake. Right? Am I missing something obvious? It’s clearly a sequel in the sense that it maintains continuity. Yes, there’s a new cast of characters, but the old cast is also here and central to the action. That inherently disqualifies it from being a remake. What it is, is a legacy sequel, but I don’t think that term quite existed yet in 2011. So it settles for “the rules of the remake” as its central meta-angle. I suspect it’s implyinh that this new set of young guns are meant to replace (or remake) our original cast, so that we can get that moment where Gale and Sidney decide to take matters into their own hands (“don’t fuck with the orignal”, etc.).
Does this make the movie bad, per se? Maybe not. But it does dull the movie’s insights to a large degree. Regardless of how you feel about the meta-nature of the franchise, every movie up to this point has at least been self-reflexively talking about the thing the movie actually is. Here, you can feel the strain of having to make everything a reference to itself. In that way, SCREAM 4 also finds itself bound too securely to the trappings of the original movie. Why not? After all, you don’t fuck with it. Right?
Anyway, the most interesting thing about SCREAM 4 turns out to be its aborted “next generation” cast, which feels like the early 2010s set in amber. This movie captures Hayden Panettiere right in between her runs on Heroes and Nashville. The brief presence of Adam Brody reminded me, “Oh, yeah, The O.C. was the hottest thing at my high school for a couple of months”. Lucy Hale, Aimee Teegarden and Britt Robertson all whiz by during that terrible opening sequence, and each sure seemed like potential “next big things”. Of course, by the end of the movie, most of them are dead, so the chances of any of them coming back for a potential SCREAM 5 were admittedly small, but you had to wonder if the choice to basically retain none of them, save Hayden was intentional, a “fuck them kids” mentality driving narrative policy.
As it happens, this would be the last SCREAM movie to be directed by Wes Craven, who passed away in 2015. Because of this, I get the sense that many SCREAM fans kind of consider this one the true “last” film of the franchise, which…maybe. We’ll get into how I feel about the next two in a second.
Like, right now.
It would be another eleven years before Ghostface rose from the dead. And this time, they did have a term for “legacy sequel”....
SCREAM (2022)
Directed by: Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, Tyler Gillett
Written by: James Vanderbilt, Guy Busick
Starring: Melissa Barrera, Jenna Ortega, Jack Quaid, Mason Gooding, Jasmin Savoy Brown, Mikey Madison, Marley Shelton, David Arquette, Courteney Cox, Neve Campbell
Released: January 14, 2022
Length: 114 minutes
SCREAM: THE NEXT NEXT GENERATION!
With ten years of distance, it’s kind of overwhelming how much STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS broke Hollywood.
Don’t get me wrong; I like the long-awaited seventh installment of the seminal science fiction franchise. It’s got verve, it’s slick, the dialogue doesn’t feel like bad fake Shakespeare, it’s cast brilliantly. But…as far as setting up a potential new generation of characters to carry the franchise through the next forty years, it’s a little underwhelming. Rey, Finn and Poe are all charming and engaging, and Kylo Ren makes for a formidable, unpredictable villain, but they’re all ultimately in service to the original characters that started it all. I mean that literally: they all seem in awe of Luke Skywalker and Han and Darth Vader. So when Han, Leia, and Chewbacca all enter the movie? The new kids take a backseat. I get why this stuff is all satisfying to fans who just want to see the heroes of their youth, but it’s not exactly future-oriented thinking. The original actors can’t do this forever. Isn’t it worth at least considering passing the baton over?
Anyway, in the wake of THE FORCE AWAKENS’ cultural and financial success, a whole bunch of franchises got their legacy sequels where everyone just kind of sat around and went “aren’t the old characters cool?” in kind. JURASSIC PARK begat JURASSIC WORLD: DOMINION. GHOSTBUSTERS begat GHOSTBUSTERS: AFTERLIFE. In 2018, HALLOWEEN begat…uh, HALLOWEEN. And in 2022, SCREAM begat…SCREAM. Goddamnit! Just put a fucking number after the title! It’s not like it’s a new continuity!
The good news is that, since SCREAM 4 already did the “step aside, ya booger-eaters!” routine, SCREAM 5 (I refuse to call it anything else) kind of splits the difference on new and old characters. In fact, it sets up one of its primary newcomers, Jenna Ortega, in a pretty inventive way. We finally get an exciting twist to the “new cute young thing plays phone trivia with Ghostface before getting eviscerated before the title drop” act: this time, the girl survives.
This attack on Tara Carpenter in Woodsboro kicks off the entire rest of the movie. Her estranged older sister Sam (Barrera) and her sweet, nerdy boyfriend Richie (Quaid) return to Woodsboro to solve the mystery of Tara’s attacker. Tara’s group of friends, including Amber (Madison), Chad (Gooding) and Mindy (Savoy Brown), the latter who happen to be the nephew and niece of Randy Meeks , do their best to investigate (and in Mindy’s case, set the potential “rules” of the situation), but ultimately, they need to call on the past: Sidney Prescott, as well as Dewey Riley and his estranged wife, Gale Weathers.
Oh, and Sam is harboring a secret. You see, her and Tara’s dad is actually Billy Loomis (Skeet Ulrich). And she’s seeing visions of her dad constantly, goading her on to let her killer instinct out to take care of the problem…
So, yes, our surviving cast all get their moments to shine. Let’s start with Dewey. What’s interesting about ol’ Dewey is his arc. Since we’ve last seen him, he’s been separated from the love of his life, and is kind of just drifting around, wallowing in his pain. He finds a new purpose helping the young kids pursue their mission, only to end up dying a hero, murdered by our villain as a way to permanently raise the stakes.
Oh, wait, fuck, sorry, I still had my FORCE AWAKENS tab open. That was Han Solo’s arc.
Look, I’m being a smart-ass (and I do think that Arquette is actually quite good as an aged, kinda beaten down Dewey), but it is striking just how much SCREAM 5 fits into the “legacy sequel” template that STAR WARS established. Considering how heavily the story initially leans on the Carpenter sisters, whose central conflict is actually fairly compelling, and a good way to take a character from the past and inform the characters of the present, it’s strange that the final battle includes them and Gale and Sidney, mostly because…it’s a SCREAM movie and Gale and Sidney should just be part of these Ghostface showdowns, I suppose. I love Courteney Cox and Neve Campbell! Who doesn’t? But you feel this sense that their characters are involved in SCREAM 5 because that’s what one simply does.
Speaking of Ghostface, I do think SCREAM 5 features the two best killers since the original tandem of Billy and Stu; I think Amber and Ritchie are fun antagonists, helped by being played by two of the better young talents in Hollywood (Mikey Madison and Jack Quaid). The actual motivations feel a tad half-baked and overly complicated at first. They both end up being toxic fans of the STAB series who were pissed about STAB 8, and are determined to create a new set of murders to base a new STAB 8 around. This feels like a lot of work, but then I think about the lengths the average LAST JEDI skeptic* on Reddit might go in order to wipe that movie off the map, and this only feels like slight satire.
*Not for nothing, but it’s established in SCREAM 5 that STAB 8 was directed by Rian Johnson.
As for Tara and Sam, I think the Carpenter sisters are the two most interesting things the series had at their disposal at this point. As mentioned above, the idea of having a latent killer inside you is interesting, especially in a series where the lines between good guy and bad guy are so clearly drawn. And I think Melissa Barrera and Jenna Ortega have a compelling chemistry between them (although I do think Ortega gives the clearly stronger performance; Barrera’s best moments come in the next one). Doing the “legacy sequel” for real after a pseudo-one in SCREAM 4 was probably inevitable when doing a SCREAM movie in the 2020’s.
But if they really wanted to keep the series going into the future, it seems to me that they would eventually have to look beyond the past…
SCREAM VI (2023)
Directed by: Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, Tyler Gillett
Written by: James Vanderbilt, Guy Busick
Starring: Melissa Barrera, Jenna Ortega, Mason Gooding, Jasmin Savoy Brown, Courteney Cox, Jack Champion, Henry Czerny, Dermot Mulroney, Tony Revolori, Samara Weaving, Hayden Panettiere
Released: March 10, 2023
Length: 122 minutes
SCREAM: NY!
SCREAM VI is notable for a few firsts. This is the first (and, as of right now, only) SCREAM movie to not feature Neve Campbell, a result of a fairly shameful controversy where Paramount apparently just refused to pay Campbell what she thought she was worth which, considering she was basically still the de facto face of the franchise in the eyes of many, was frankly quite a bit.
This is also the first SCREAM movie to be set in the city of New York (bada bing, baby!), which adds a bit of a jolt. It’s not nearly the first SCREAM sequel to be set outside the confines of Woodsboro (SCREAM 2 and 3 already moved locations to undefined Ohio and Hollywood, respectively). But this one feels different for some reason; the idea of a Ghostface running around in one of the most populated cities in the world adds its own kind of tension. There’s a fairly iconic sequence on the subway, as Ghostface hides among a bevy of Halloween costume-clad riders* near the end of the film that no other SCREAM movie would quite be able to pull off.
*That’s another first for the SCREAM series: this is the first one set during Halloween!
It’s also, perhaps due to a combination of the first two factors, the first SCREAM sequel that does seem to be forging a new path for the franchise. With Dewey killed, Sidney a no-show and Gale only there for a quick action scene or two, the main narrative is truly driven by the Carpenter sisters and their group of friends. And, look, I don’t love that this decision was fueled by Paramount being cheapskates, but it unfortunately did lead to something the franchise was likely going to need one day anyway.
If you haven’t picked up on it yet, I’m a fairly big advocate for SCREAM VI. It’s not as good as the original (it’s doubtful any sequel will be at this point), but I do think it’s appropriately taking what worked about SCREAM I, and just transposing it onto a new set of kids, with no real judgment or tone associated with it. We start with an opening that doesn’t try to outsmart itself. Instead it goes back to basics; recognizable blonde (here, Samara Weaving, the girl from READY OR NOT!) gets lured by a mysterious phone call into a vulnerable position, then gets gutted. Yes, there’s a twist to it: her killer (Tony Revolori) then gets killed by the real Ghostface, but this college-kid movie dork character is so scummy and aggravating that you actually cheer his death. So, there.
We also have our new Randy, Mindy, who returns from SCREAM 5 to do the whole “here’s the movie we’re in and here are the rules” routine. This time, it’s a sequel to the “requel sequel” (i.e. the follow-up to an installment of a series that “reboots” the franchise with new characters while acknowledging what came before), which…okay, yes, that’s exactly what SCREAM VI is, but the meta-aspect of the series is starting to feel a little inside baseball. I don’t know that anybody really uses terms like this, save for insufferable movie nerds on Reddit forums. Then again, pseudo-Reddit speak is what made SCREAM famous in the first place, so that’s another point in SCREAM VI’s favor.
SCREAM VI also eschews being cute and winky for just getting down to it and doing some good-old-fashioned sequences. The subway one is the most famous, but I’m an advocate for the ladder scene. It’s absurdly simple: with Ghostface knocked unconscious in the bedroom, our new Woodsboro gang are trying to hop from one apartment complex to the other by using a precariously-perched metal ladder hanging between two windows. You immediately know where this is going: after most cross the divide with success, Ghostface awakens and starts bouncing the ladder to knock off a straggler. But, considering we’re six movies in, it’s shocking that a Ghostface hadn’t tried this move yet. There’s no meta-trick to it, no nod to previous installments, just a tense little sequence (that does admittedly end in gore).
Finally, we have our two lead girls, Melissa Barrera and Jenna Ortega, who have become very popular in their own right, which I think is important for the health of a long-running franchise. Before catching up with the new SCREAMs, I had found it extremely surprising that it seemed (at least, observationally) like the series had picked up a Gen-Z following in recent years. Kiddos on Twitter seemed to be very invested in SCREAM, a series whose first movie was a classic that was also undeniably stuck in time. I don’t know that Skeet Ulrich necessarily means anything to a Gen-Z household, except perhaps to their parents. I don’t subscribe to the idea that young people are inherently uncurious, but I wouldn’t have blamed anyone under the age of 30 if a fifth and sixth installment of a series from the 90s got dismissed, even if the movies were now attempting to appeal to them directly.
But, SCREAM has against all odds found a branch to the next generation of twenty-somethings. Part of that is that the franchise meta-trappings are unique to other horror (or at least it used to be), and part of that is that…there’s just something about that goddamn Ghostface mask. But a large part of it is that the franchise has finally found a pair of leads to actually carry the torch. Jenna Ortega has ridden these new SCREAMs to become somewhat of a spooky darling, appearing in BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE, the Wednesday TV series and, of course, Sabrina Carpenter’s “Taste” music video. But it’s Melissa Barrera who kinda holds the whole thing together, really making you feel the weight of the Billy Loomis legacy, and her attempt to appeal to the better angels of her nature, before finally needing to unleash the beast on our new Ghostfaces (who turn to out to be Ritchie’s family, led by fucking Dermot Mulroney. Wild times we live in that Dermot Mulroney is now playing Ghostface).
We’re left to ponder in the final moments, what are the consequences now that Sam has succumbed to her dead father’s wishes, and is finally embracing the killer inside? It’s a compelling question, one that can only be answered in the inevitable SCREAM 7…
SCREAM 7 (2026)
Directed by: Kevin Williamson
Written by: Williamson, Guy Busick
Starring: Neve Campbell, Isabel May, Jasmin Savoy Brown, Mason Gooding, Joel McHale, Anna Camp, Matthew Lillard, Courteney Cox, Mckenna Grace
Released: February 27, 2026
Length: 114 minutes
Ah! Well, nevertheless.
I’m imagining someone, years from now, working their way through the famous SCREAM series and reaching this one, ignorant of any behind-the-scenes context and thinking, “what the hell is going on here? Why is this one going all the way back in on Sidney? Wait, what about that little cliffhanger at the end of 6? Why did they bring back Mason Gooding and Jasmin Savoy Brown, but not Melissa Barrera or Jenna Ortega? Where are the Carpenter sisters?”
And, well, look, if you think we’re going to untie the Gordian knot that is “the Israel-Palestine conflict” and determine what the objective 100% right thing to feel about it is in this space, I think you’re going to be disappointed. That said, I am willing to state that in my opinion, Melissa Barrera’s comments about it were not to a level deserving of the cut from Alexander’s sword that it resulted in, with her being swiftly fired from SCREAM 7. I am also willing to state that I immensely respect Jenna Ortega’s immediate stepping down in response (as well as her doubling down as to why, after initial reports cited a “scheduling conflict”). I don’t know, the whole thing is a mess, leading to the version of the movie we eventually received.
And, look, this appears to be the year of “panic-sweat-laced nostalgia sequel” being made after the foundation the franchise was built on appeared to be crumbling (AVENGERS: DOOMSDAY, you’re up next!). And, given that circumstance, SCREAM 7 isn’t an out-and-out disaster. For most of the runtime, it’s mostly a fairly standard SCREAM sequel. Sidney Prescott gets pulled out of Ghostface-killing retirement (again) when Ghostface re-emerges (again) to threaten her loved ones (again), this time in the form of husband Mark (Joel McHale) and daughter Tatum (Isabel May). Gale returns (again) to help solve (and publicize) the recent murders, despite tension between her and Sidney (again).
In between that and the inevitable shock reveal(s?) are your standard gory stabbings, slayings, and murders, as well as a couple of pretty solid setpieces. The opening sequence certainly feels like a classic SCREAM scene, taking place in the old Stu Macher house, which has since become a novelty Airbnb. There are a couple of fun misdirects featuring an animatronic Ghostface figure, and a fairly bleak kill featuring Michelle Randolph falling from a chandelier. But, then, you knew that already, since the entire thing is prominently featured in the trailers and TV spots. So is the scene where Sidney and Tatum are crawling behind the wall of their house, trying desperately to avoid Ghostface’s constantly-ramming knife. I guess if you’ve seen an ad for SCREAM 7 whiz by, you’ve likely seen everything worth mentioning.
(Although the trailers don’t include the scene where Mckenna Grace delivers the only real response one can have to being strung up and eviscerated by Ghostface: an incredulous “what the fuck?”)
But, as always, SCREAM 7 is barreling towards the inevitable Ghostface reveal. For 90% of the movie, it certainly wants you to believe that the killer is a mysteriously alive Stu Macher, who’s been sending Sidney weird, slightly awkward FaceTime messages after every murder. Suffice to say, this is a misdirect to conceal the real killers, one of which you could guess simply by taking the amount of new characters and subtracting everyone who is definitively dead, and the other of which you’d never guess in a million years because it frankly doesn’t make sense. I don’t want to give it away, but I do think if they had just gone with “Stu is just still alive and killing people again”, it would legitimately be more supported by the first two acts than what we ended up getting. It was truly jaw-dropping, to the point where both my wife and I openly wondered if we had missed something.
It all adds to the feeling of a movie covered in flop sweat, trying desperately to smash buttons in the wake of losing both of their leads and several sets of directors. And, look, SCREAM 7 is on track to be one of the most financially successful entries in the franchise to date, so maybe Paramount feels like they’ve won the day on this one. Maybe they have! I tend to underestimate general audiences’ never-ending tolerance for nostalgia bait; I have seen more than one take since this weekend that basically amounts to “this is Neve Campbell’s franchise and always will be”.
Which, fine! I love Neve Campbell, and so does everybody else. The people have spoken. But, with SCREAM 8 on the way, I have real questions about how much more story can be wrung from Sidney. Not counting SCREAM VI, we’ve now gotten five movies of “Sidney gets pulled back into Ghostface’s web, despite all attempts to distance”. Every single person she’s ever loved has been threatened or killed. The theme of “trauma always lingers” has been hammered home in this franchise over and over and over, since the days that Socks the Cat roamed the Oval Office, and Toni Braxton begged for someone to unbreak her heart. So, what now? Another round of the same next year? Does anyone dare hand the franchise over to yet another round of up-and-comers, with Sidney and Gale hovering in the background?
I don’t mean to be cynical, but it’s hard not to feel like the path to longevity that SCREAM had stumbled upon over the past five years has been completely unpaved, mostly out of unforced error. But SCREAM, much like the STAB series, and Ghostface himself, has had a unique ability to stay alive, even when it’s looked deader than dead. So, genuinely, who knows? It’s possible by the time we hit SCREAM 10 or whatever, the franchise will have hit a third or fourth wind and all this hand-wringing will be for naught.
Just…SCREAM, I implore you. Whatever you do, don’t leave the room and say “I’ll be right back…”