The Deeper Meaning of the Scream Movies

Ghostface, first and foremost, isn’t  scary. It’s scared. It’s a screaming face, reflecting the fear of its victims  back at them. Round and round it goes, the feedback loop of tragedy and trauma.  And caught in the centre of the storm is Sidney Prescott. The sleepy small town  of Woodsboro was crying out for something more. It needed a story with a monster and a  hero. And in the absence of anything better, it got one. “What’s your favourite scary movie?”  This isn’t just a horror movie, this i

s a horror movie in which the characters know about horror  movies. For Sam, it’s okay to don the Ghostface costume. I don’t think Wes Craven would have done  that. These films explain the past 3 decades, a film industry living on borrowed time, the rise  of social media. “Pop culture is the politics of the 21st century.” In what is, for me, one of the  most disturbing scenes in the franchise, we see… 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, h

ouse-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 movi

e?” (Scream, 1996) This 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  newcomer

s 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, p

opulated 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 pla

y the part usually die, but the idea lives on. So what is  Ghostface? At its most basic level; it’s a costume, a voice (“Hello Sidney”) 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 s

cout. 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 int

o 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 li

fe.” 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 g

host 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 th

e 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 horr

or. 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 mor

alism  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 indulg

ing  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  makin

g some kind of moral statement. Believe me, I'm not. In Halloween, I viewed the  characters as simply normal teenagers.” “…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.” 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 subver

sive 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 tim

e 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 pa

rt 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 reali

ty 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 cl

assic 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 ne

xt 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  any

one. 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  counselling. 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 imm

ortalised 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 doi

ng 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 a

bout 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 th

at 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 be

ginning, 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 fami

liar. 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 in

nocence… 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 fr

amed 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 o

f 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  victi

m. 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 issue

s.” (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 S

idney’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.” (Scre

am 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 th

en 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 n

ow,  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 publ

ic 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  ma

kes 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 hi

s 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 horro

r 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 deser

ted 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, an

d  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 reboo

t, 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 t

o 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. Yo

u 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  c

hange 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 coun

terattack 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 wa

s 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. 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 wor

th 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 t

hat 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? Wh

o 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 conflat

ing  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 w

ere 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.) My name is Thomas Thorogood. I explore the deeper  meaning of movies. Do subscribe if you’d like to stay in th

e loop. I’ve been wanting to make  this video for a while. I’ve been planning it for weeks. Scream is my favourite horror  franchise and I wanted to do a bit of a deep dive. Undoubtedly there are many things I’ve  missed. Do let me know in the comments. Do you agree with my thesis? Do you disagree? Do let  me know any other bits of trivia that you think would be worth me knowing as well. I’d love  to hear that. Thanks for watching. Goodbye.