This past week, in honor of the fifth installment of Scream hitting theaters, I decided to go back and revisit the prior four films. I am fairly confident I haven’t watched any of these since the last one came out in 2011. There was the short-lived MTV series based on the Scream IP that I watched from 2015-2019, but it didn’t include any of the characters that are synonymous with this particular franchise. But we’ll dig a little bit more into the newest film at the end. And I promise, no spoilers!
First, let’s go back to 1996 and the beginning of the Scream saga. We meet high schooler, Sydney Prescott after two fellow classmates were brutally murdered in the small town of Woodsboro. She’s pretty quickly chosen as the next and ultimate target, which brings back painful memories of her mother’s rape and murder from the year prior. Of course, Sydney is pretty scrappy and resourceful when she encounters Ghostface, even though she does trap herself in her second story bedroom (face palm). There are lots of casualties and finger pointing (namely, her boyfriend, Billy Loomis) before the final fight at Stu’s house party goes down. Luckily, class horror buff Randy Meeks lives to see another day, along with local deputy Dewey, and kind of annoying anchorwoman, Gale Weathers. In the ultimate showdown, it’s revealed that Billy and Stu are the killers and that they killed Sydney’s mother the year prior. Apparently, she cheated with Billy’s dad and tore his family apart. Pretty good motive, but he definitely underestimates Sydney when she goes to deliver a gunshot between the eyes.
In the sequel, Sydney has made her way to college in a totally brand new town, but that doesn’t stop Ghostface from showing up during the movie within a movie premiere for Stab, based on Sydney’s life as detailed in Gale’s book. Once again, the two women are put together, along with Dewey who is always looking out for Sydney. It doesn’t seem like her pre-med boyfriend is going to be the killer this time, but that certainly doesn’t mean he doesn’t end up dead. A lot of other people at this college get mowed down before it’s finally revealed that the killer’s are another duo, made up of fellow classmate, Mickey, and Billy’s mother. She’s just out for straight up revenge, where Mickey was planning on using violence in movies as his defense in court. Both of them looked truly unhinged during the big reveal and final fight scene. Unfortunately, Randy doesn’t make it out alive, but he does manage to impart some good horror movie rules on the group.
In the third film, Sydney moves even further away and essentially locks herself in a compound. She only resurfaces when people start getting killed on a movie set and she sees younger pictures of her mother in Hollywood. This third installment manages to get even more meta when the victims this time around are the cast of the upcoming Stab sequel. Most of movie sees Sydney, Gale, and Dewey working with their big screen counterparts, but also digging into the archives of Sydney’s mother’s life. They get some post-humus horror movie trilogy advice, where they all learn anyone is fair game as a victim, including Sydney. The final showdown comes in another house, but this one is much bigger and belongs to the producer of the film. It’s made more fun with lots of secret passageways. There’s only one killer in this film, and it’s the director of Stab, who also happens to be Sydney’s half brother. Turns out she lived and worked in Hollywood for a handful of years, but gave him up and then ignored his existence just before her murder. In fact, he’s the catalyst for all the killings that have gone on in Sydney’s life.
The fourth film didn’t hit theaters until 11 years after the trilogy ended, but it was a delight with tons of celebrity appearances and a fun twist. Sydney is only back in town to promote her own book, but gets caught up in a bunch of new killings that just so happen to fall on the anniversary of the first set of murders. Sydney’s cousin Jill is caught in the crosshairs, so she sticks around to help figure it all out with Gale and Dewey. There are a lot of casualties, as there are in all of the Scream films, but these ones always felt a bit more gory to me for some reason. It’s turns out that a kid from the school’s “movie club” is one of the killers, but so is Jill! She’s trying to get the spotlight on her after living in Sydney’s shadow all these years. She does a pretty good job beating herself up, but Jill underestimates the power of a final girl, so it’s really Sydney who gets the last laugh.
Finally, in the newest installment, and the first to not be directed by the late Wes Craven, this film is certainly an homage to what came before, but also cleverly takes the franchise in a new direction. The film manages to insert our “legacy” characters into a brand new cast of characters that are all pretty likeable in their own way. With that being said, I think the original cast totally needs to go away if people are going to bother to remember any of the new faces. I did enjoy how they managed to connect these new characters to the past, and they were able to explore some newer horror tropes, but they stayed true to the films that came before by keeping it about someone in a Ghostface mask going around and stabbing people. I think I’ll be getting a second viewing of this film, so I’ll be trying to pull out some more Easter eggs. Overall though, it was a great chapter from some new filmmakers.
What a journey this week was! Revisiting all of these great Scream films make me realize how well they hold up! Sure, you’ve got some 90s and early 2000s technologies and fashion in there, but the base of the film is what makes it great. The scares are good, the kills are bloody, and these films constantly make fun of themselves. That’s what really sets them apart from everything else out there, really. If you’ve watched any of the previous Scream installments, then by all means get your ass to the theater! And even if you haven’t, this isn’t a bad place to start.