[UPDATED] Ranking the Scream Franchise
[UPDATED] Ranking the Scream Franchise
America’s coziest slasher franchise, definitively ranked.
This email will cut off in your inbox, so click the title to read on-site.
I first wrote this ranking in 2022, before SCREAM VI came out, and before Melissa Barrera was fired from Scream 7 for expressing support for Palestinian liberation. Since my horror group chat just finished our Scream-athon, I thought I should update my ranking to include the 6th and final (to me) entry. I believe in a free Palestine, and I believe that conflating criticism of Israel with antisemitism is itself dangerous and antisemitic.
When it comes to horror, slashers are my comfort sub-genre. Something about the familiar rhythms and consistent beats soothes me. But above all, I absolutely love the Scream franchise. I love its dedication to subverting a sub-genre that often trends stale (that’s the trade-off of familiarity and consistency), its commitment to its characters, and its malleability. Some horror fans dislike this franchise in part because there’s no consistent killer, like a Michael or a Jason. Instead, there’s a consistent hero, and the killer gets to personify whatever societal fears are percolating at the time. That freshness delights me just as much as the recurring heroes comfort me.
But, as with any franchise, there are highs and lows, so today I’m rating and ranking each entry to date. I’m rating each of my criteria on a scale of 1-5 stabs (🔪). And if you disagree with me, you’re wrong.
Criteria
Opening Kill Scene. A staple in the slasher genre that this franchise arguably perfected. This is the scene that lets you know what kind of movie you’re in for. How scary is it? How intriguing is it? How well does it set up the rest of the movie?
Snap, Crackle, & Pop (Sidney, Gale, & Dewey). The central three characters throughout the franchise. How interesting were their arcs? How delightful are Gale’s bitchy one-liners? How much of a relatably human badass is Sidney? How well does Dewey preserve the goofy heart of the movie?
Supporting Cast. Most of these characters are here to get sliced and diced, but the true greats are the ones who make us laugh and make us care.
Scares. Self explanatory, I hope.
Jokes. Ditto, but jokes.
Plot. “It doesn’t make sense” can be an extremely boring argument against a movie—we aren’t watching documentaries—but the plot has to be satisfying and engaging. Loose threads that nag while the movie is happening are a legit problem.
The Killer Reveal: I want the killer’s justification to have weight, to provoke, and to connect with the rest of the movie. An unexpected twist is great and all, but if the motive doesn’t resonate, then what are we doing here?
(There’s also nowhere else for me to put this, but major kudos to Roger Jackson for his incredible voice work in every single one of these movies. He manages to sound like every single killer in the franchise while keeping the same gnarly voice throughout. This role is just more evidence for why you should hire professional voice actors instead of celebrities for this kind of thing!)
Anyway. Here there be SPOILERS.
Scream (1996)
Opening Kill Scene: 🔪🔪🔪🔪🔪. Instantly iconic, talented, brilliant, incredible, amazing, show stopping, spectacular, never the same, totally unique, completely not ever been done before. A short film in its own right, Wes Craven gives us a masterclass in building tension and emotional stakes in just a few minutes. Drew Barrymore’s wig is oh so very.
Snap Crackle & Pop: 🔪🔪🔪🔪. Sidney hasn’t become the “I fucking killed him” badass of Scream 2 yet, but “not in MY movie” is pretty great. Gale and Dewey’s romance is as surprising as it is endearing. (Appropriately meta-textual - Courteney Cox and David Arquette started dating as filming wrapped.)
Supporting Cast: 🔪🔪🔪🔪🔪. Tatum is a queer icon whose every line delivery is a masterpiece and I could really leave it at that, but Randy, Billy, and Stu are all absolute champion supporting players. These characters are vivid, memorable, and a bit weird. Stu’s tongue acting alone.
This isn’t when Tatum taps him on the head and hisses “stupidity leak!” But it could be. Scares: 🔪🔪🔪🔪. None of these movies are the scariest genre fare out there, but this one keeps you guessing and a bit off balance throughout the movie. The violence was shocking in its time, and the intimacy of it still packs a punch.
Jokes: 🔪🔪🔪🔪. Unlike a lot of the imitators that came after it, this movie doesn’t have all of its characters sounding the same, with the same sense of humor. The laughs range from goofy to biting, and balance out the scares well.
Plot: 🔪🔪🔪🔪. All of the kills are character-motivated, either out of malice or as part of the killers’ master plan. It’s hard to decide which motivation is more chilling, but they’re both solid.
The Killer Reveal: 🔪🔪🔪🔪🔪. Untouchable. You spent the whole movie second guessing yourself and cancelling yourself out. People love bragging about how they could predict the killer of any given whodunnit, but if you say you correctly predicted a DOUBLE killer reveal, you’re a liar. Add to that the scintillating Leopold & Loeb subtext between Billy and Stu, and you’ve got the franchise winner.
Average: 4.4 🔪Scream 2 (1997)
OKS: 🔪🔪🔪🔪🔪. Wes Craven didn’t just double up on star power for the sequel. He took the very correct feedback that Scream was too blindingly white and opened his movie with 1) D’Angelo’s cover of “She’s Always In My Hair,” 2) Jada Pinkett Smith and Omar Epps, 3) arguing about Black representation in horror (and romcoms). I also quote Jada’s line “I got MY money. I asked for YOUR money” on about a weekly basis.
SCP: 🔪🔪🔪🔪. Sid’s martyr complex coupled with her “not like the other (sorority) girls” shtick gets tiresome, but she also gets to deliver the absolute wham line “you forgot one thing about Billy. I fucking killed him.” Right to his mother’s FACE. Gale & Dewey start their recurring trend of fighting for the first two acts of the movie and reuniting sweetly in Act Three. Gale getting into the ambulance with Dewey at the end, when in the first one she stayed to deliver her news story, gets me every time.
SC: 🔪🔪🔪. Listen. Timothy Olyphant could ruin my life and my credit score any day of the week, but his Mickey drags down the overall rating. First he’s doing entirely too much, then he disappears for 45 minutes, and I really don’t think he has the range for his big reveal (more below). But big points for Portia Di Rossi, Elise Neal, Duane Martin, and queen Sarah Michelle Gellar.
Scares: 🔪🔪🔪🔪. They ramp up the kill count and the gore in this one, including taking out a beloved character from the first movie. But other than that one, the emotional stakes do not feel as high as they could.
Jokes: 🔪🔪🔪🔪🔪. Elise Neal and Duane Martin (separately and their one moment together). The fake Stab movie clips. “Hi, Sidney! No, I really mean that. Hi.” Hit after hit after hit. For my money, this is the funniest entry (at least, intentionally).
Plot: 🔪🔪. They made a huge deal about the names of the victims matching the names of the original Woodsboro victims, and then immediately dropped that plot point. Mickey also disappears halfway through Act 2, which dampens the impact of his big reveal. And we spend too much time with Sidney going back and forth about whether she can trust her boyfriend. Her ambivalence is justified, but boring to watch play out three times.
KR: 🔪🔪🔪. Mickey ruins the immaculate Debbie Salt’s reveal with his weird torso acting and suddenly effeminate speaking style. The way he delivers the line “BILLY’S. MOTHER.” will be the last thing I see before I die.
He looks like a baby bird waiting to feed. But again, Debbie Salt, her white suit, and her bulging eyes are a camp masterpiece.
Average: 3.7 🔪Scream 3 (2000)
OKS: 🔪🔪. Breaks the mold by going with in-universe celebrities rather than real-world celebrities, which is cool. Kind of impactful for the plot, but not really. And the killer’s motivation for this one is odd—they say they “would kill to know where Sidney is,” but why would Coton Weary of all people know where Sidney is? They aren’t friends; she wrongly accused him of her mother’s murder before the first film, and he hesitated to save her life until she agreed to do a Diane Sawyer interview with him in the second.
SCP: 🔪🔪. Not enough Sidney; too much sitcommy bickering between Gale and Dewey. But the awkward hug between Gale and Sidney—two women who keep surviving horrors together but don’t like each other yet—is quite hilarious. And Dewey’s proposal to Gale at the end is as touching as it is bittersweet (it includes him saying that they both know the relationship won’t work).
SC: 🔪🔪. both of those knives are for Parker Posey, pt 1. Jennifer Jolie is a delightful creation who ably straps the entire supporting cast to her back.
Scares: 🔪. It’s hard to believe after the past two decades, but the Columbine school shooting really cut down on how much cinematic violence audiences could stomach for a while. Miramax determined that Scream 3 needed to be more of a comedy, and that Craven needed to reel in the violence and scares. The set pieces are staged so artificially that everything feels lifeless. I also don’t care about most of these characters, so watching them get boringly killed doesn’t do anything for me.
Jokes: 🔪🔪. Both of those knives are for Parker Posey, pt 2. Unfortunately, most of the non-Jennifer Jolie comedy doesn’t work for me.
But boy does Jennifer WORK! Plot: 🔪🔪. Points for making the norm of sexual manipulation and assault in Hollywood the secondary antagonist! But the studio cut the script to ribbons, a fact which of course makes it into the script itself, which is cute but not winning. And all of the stuff with the ghost of Sidney’s mom just doesn’t quite work for me.
KR: 🔪. This is the only entry to date with only one killer, and boy is he a flop. My man has to say his name and job title when he reveals himself because most of us watching forgot he was even in the movie. I also don’t really like the retconning the movie does here, saying that Roman inspired Billy & Stu’s murder spree in the first movie. If it were effective, I think that reveal would dull the chilling impact of the original. (Un)fortunately, nothing can convince me that Roman matters.
Average: 1.7 🔪Scream 4 aka SCRE4M (2011)
OKS: 🔪🔪🔪🔪. Love the film within a film within a film. (Taking a knife off for Anna Paquin’s performance.) I love how truly disorienting this scene is, constantly throwing you off about what’s “real” and what’s a movie. Great set-up for the killers’ mindset, too.
SCP: 🔪🔪🔪. Solid arcs for all three, especially Gale; and the arcs make sense for where the characters have been throughout these movies. Laurie Strode’s flop of a memoir in Halloween Ends wishes it could be Sidney Prescott’s perfectly fine memoir here. But the Dewey/Gale dynamic doesn’t feel as fleshed out as it could, even though it makes sense their marriage would be on the rocks at this point. (Appropriately meta-textual - Courteney and David had separated at this point.)SC: 🔪🔪🔪. Kirby continues the trend of witty queer icons and damn near runs away with the whole film. This is truly Hayden Panetierre’s greatest performance, and I say that with the confidence of someone who has only seen her in this, Remember The Titans, and that krumping scene in Bring It On: All Or Nothing. There’s a reason fans kept the theory that she survived the film despite getting stabbed in the gut going for over a decade. Shoutout too to the deeply weird Deputy Judy. But most of the teens are deeply forgettable and somewhat interchangeable.
Why is the coolest girl in school dressed like a 40-year-old mother? Mysteries abound. Scares: 🔪🔪. It’s really hard to care about the characters’ lives when their personalities are so blah. With the notable exception of Kirby! But the gore is impressive, especially after the dry spell of Scream 3.
Jokes: 🔪🔪🔪. Our typically reliable Gale isn’t at her best here, which is part of the plot, but which also means we don’t get her consistently bouncing off and/or sparking with someone. This is really Kirby’s show.Plot: 🔪🔪🔪. This plot feels like a first draft, or like a lot of connective tissue scenes were left on the cutting room floor. Characters don’t feel particularly motivated, but just go to places and do things because of what the scene calls for. The Stab-a-thon scene is also intentionally anti-climactic, which the characters (of course) comment on, but the anticlimax weighs the energy down right as we’re going into the third act. I also don’t know where else to link Kirby’s fantastic horror quiz scene, so here you go.
KR: 🔪🔪🔪. Y’all like this a lot more than I do, and I think it’s because Emma Roberts doesn’t convince me. There’s not enough bass in her voice or something. The reveal does make the whole movie play better upon rewatch, though; Emma is doing great work at playing her character’s fascination with Sidney as fear and as envy, depending on the context. Co-conspirator Charlie seems like such a throwaway, though the reveal that he is a murderously entitled misogynist does land well.
Average: 3 🔪SCREAM (2022)
OKS: 🔪🔪🔪🔪. Jenna Ortega is the scream queen of her generation, though her jab about 90s slashers like Scream being overlit cut deep. I spent the entire scene hoping she wouldn’t get killed, because I liked her too much.
SCP: 🔪🔪🔪🔪. The original gang are backgrounded more in this entry than any other so far, which makes sense, given that this is the official handoff to a new generation. But they make their time onscreen count. Dewey’s arc works the best, and is absolutely devastating. Sidney’s weariness after two decades of dealing with this shit feels very lived-in.
SC: 🔪🔪🔪🔪. This cast of teens feels more like the primary group than the Scream 4 teens, like they’ve actually grown into the spotlight. All of them except for that one white girl who’s used as a clumsily obvious red herring really shine to me. And more of them survive the movie than in any previous entry, which makes me happy!
Scares: 🔪🔪🔪🔪. Emotional investment goes a long way. I liked almost every character a lot, and genuinely didn’t want to see them hurt or killed. The set pieces are also some of the best-directed since Scream 2 - fantastic tension all the way through.
Dammit, Dewey. Jokes: 🔪🔪🔪🔪. This one makes me laugh out loud about as much as Scream 2, in part because the humor seems organic and character-based again, and the characters are as fun and weird as they were in the original. The jokes can get a bit repetitive, though.
Plot: 🔪🔪🔪🔪. For whatever reason, the ghost of Sam’s dad works better for me than the ghost of Sidney’s mom. Perhaps because I’m happier to see the return of Billy Loomis than the ‘return’ of a character we never knew. The motivation behind all of the kills is consistent, with one weak outlier (I know some of y’all were disappointed at how little Kyle Gallner you got). I’m also a sucker for a good sister story, and this one was aces.
KR: 🔪🔪🔪🔪. Let me get this out of the way: I cannot believe that FUCKING AMBER is the one who kills Dewey. How is she even strong enough to lift him with one hand?? But beyond that, I absolutely love the way Jack Quaid plays this role and this reveal. It shows a wonderful awareness of what his appeal is and how he gets people’s guards down. I also think the toxic fandom was well handled, when it could have been a real flop.
Average: 4 🔪SCREAM VI (2023)
OKS: 🔪🔪🔪🔪. I love Samara Weaving beyond measure, and she’s deeply charming in this scene. I’ll also always appreciate a riff on the formula, so getting an unmasked Ghostface right away, only to then immediately kill him off, is really fun. Plus, Ghostface roaring “who gives a FUCK about movies?” as he slashes us into the title card is—if you’ll permit me—killer.
But the answer is “me.” I give a fuck about movies. SCP: 🔪🔪. Thanks to character deaths and contract disputes, our trio’s down to one here. Gale Weathers is always welcome, and earns two 🔪s all on her own, but she’s still just one person. And, for the second time, she’s not involved in the big climax.
SC: 🔪🔪🔪. With the entire rest of their friend group dead, the Meeks-Martin twins rise to the occasion and make the Core Four talk very endearing. I also LOVE Danny the helpful himbo king. But the rest of the new additions barely make an impression, and are extremely expendable. And, as much as I love my Queen Kirby, I’m not convinced her return did what it needed to do.
Scares: 🔪🔪🔪. This movie really doubles down on the increased gore, so we get quite a bit of wince-inducing viscera everywhere. The subway attack and the ladder escape are beautifully tense, and the bodega scene is suitably shocking—Ghostface with a shotgun?? But I’m less emotionally invested this go-round, so the scares don’t have the same impact.
“What time is it? SHOWTIME!” Jokes: 🔪🔪. I’m shocked that I’m ranking another movie in this franchise as low as Scream 3 here, but Gale and Kirby’s sniping is distressingly limp. Plus, it only took me two movies for me to tire of Mindy’s schtick. (“We. Are in. A franchise!” Respectfully, mama, this is movie 6. We been in a franchise.) I do wish we had gotten more of Liana Liberato’s Quinn, because she brought such a light touch to her Slutty Roommate archetype. Alas.
Plot: 🔪🔪. Just like with SCRE4M, this plot doesn’t entirely connect for me. Character decisions feel unmotivated, and to be honest, setting this movie in Manhattan makes it a little harder for me to suspend my disbelief at all the cross-town dashes people are making.KR: 🔪🔪🔪. This was the first in the franchise where I guessed the killers almost the second they were introduced. Whether that speaks to franchise fatigue on my part or theirs is anyone’s guess. But I do love Dermot Mulroney going straight for the rafters, and his “yeah, of COURSE it’s me” is a nice counterpoint to his son’s “I know, it sucks that it’s me” in the previous entry.
Average: 2.7🔪
So, for the record: Scream > SCREAM > Scream 2 > SCRE4M > SCREAM VI > Scream 3. As I said, I am right about this, but I look forward to your arguments in the comments!