"What's your favorite scary movie?"

A Ghostface hierarchy

My Not-Definitive-at-all Scream power ranking:

Let me preface this by saying I like all the Scream movies at least a little bit. There are no suspiciously awful entries like some other franchises, horror especially. I think that’s because the majority of them were directed by the same person in Wes Craven. They know what they are and always make sure it’s bloody enough to satisfy the lowest common denominator ( a group I’m happy to subscribe to).

6. Scream IV

My consumption of this franchise was a rush job, done within a week in order to get ready for this very installment. The new creative team coming off a well-received debut entry and taking the series to a new location seemed like easy money. Easy is a good way to describe to experience. It wasted no time and got busy doing what it does best. The opening was inventive while sticking to the roots of the franchise and was as bloody as I had come to expect. I didn’t feel like the in-universe meta was firing at all cylinders at times. I enjoy this new cast but I don’t believe they got any upgrade material to work with, although Jasmin Savoy Brown’s “fuck this franchise” was delivered beautifully.

5. Scream 3

Scream 3 is a tough one to assess. It features plenty of things to like and features some of the series’s shining jewels, Parker Posey’s performance being one of them. Its meta humor directed at the literal business they’re taking part in is very funny to me and unlocks what makes the franchise everlasting. It also came at a complicated time when trying to continue an established tone in a third entry. The Columbine shootings in 99 forced the studio to demand the gore and violence be toned down, and the set pieces reflect that. Of course, it doesn’t seriously damage the film but it is noticeable. There’s far less blood and guts this time around and for some that can be a deal breaker. My own gripe is that there’s so little Sydney Prescott that it makes me wonder why the character wasn’t written out at this point. There’s been drama around her not being in 6 but she easily could’ve been absent from this one. I will say that without her in this, we wouldn’t have this banger.

4. Scream (5)(2022)

The best part of this is the introduction of the new main cast. Jenna Ortega is bonkers in the opening scene and it rivals every opening in the entire run. Drew Barrymore is great but the worth of that scene is more context than pure performance. Ortega is clearly one of the most talented actresses working right now and is a major addition to the future of Scream. A lot of this script is catered to skewering some of the modern trends in recent blockbusters (Halloween, the Star Wars sequel trilogy) and it’s hit or miss. There’s a huge chunk dedicated specifically to Rian Johnson that I found funny, but a little too on the nose, even for Scream. The action in this is extremely exciting. The third-act twists caught me off guard and it features some of my favorite ghost-face personas. Do you prefer The Babadook? I’m not huge on it. I think it’s in the new class of horror flicks that just gapes personal trauma to trojan horse the same tropes everyone else is using. I hold similar feelings on Saint Maud. Nothing wrong with em but it’s a little pretentious for what you’re really getting.

3. Scream (1996)

This one gets major points for setting the table. I’m probably subconsciously pissing someone off by not having this at numero uno but I think this is fair when you assess its contents. David Arquette is downright sensational in this (as he is in all of them). Dewey is such an instantly lovable character and his chemistry with Courtney Cox is off the charts. How can someone not have this number one? Simple. It’s not as big and not as fully unhinged as it could be. It’s a product of being so successful that the next installments featured more blood, guts, and meta, and honestly benefitted from the excess. however, this can’t be denied as a pristine ode to the technology of yesteryear. They milked an entire premise off the lack of caller id, which shook me to my core. I NEVER answer the phone. In the 90s you kind of had to or else you’d be missing something important. That level of spontaneity in my daily life would be terrifying enough.

2. Scream 4

Is this a simp post for Hayden Panettiere? No (yes). This is actually a signal to my asontishment of how good this was. When most franchises undergo a long hiatus (Scream 3 came out in 2000) they can sometimes fall out of favor with the people who were down from the beginning. Having consumed this entire series in the span of a week, I was incapable of devopling any stale emotions towards the formula or style of Wes Craven’s filmmaking. Scream 4 actually feels like a return to form, reverting back to some of the over top gorish set pieces that had to be tamed for the previous entry. It also got back to the scholastic roots of what made the charcters in one and two feel so close. This character web actually threw me off gurard in my quest to pin ghost face before his reveal. It does a great job of playing with your expectaitons and leaves a lot of room for the legacy characters to steal the show. No one steals the show more than Panettiere’s Kirby though , who has developed into a fascinating mark in the series lore. Her roledex of horror movies meshes well with the franchise’s classic roots and just makes her sound cool as hell.

1. Scream 2

The opening of this film is one of the great openings to any horror movie ever. Using the in univsere Stab premier to re iterate everything people loved about the original, while upping the inteseity of the self referential storytelling at the same time is a work of genius. Jada Pinkett is on fire and my top choice for best opeing kill. She apparenly told Craven she wanted the death to be “long and excrutiating” and it delivers on that ten fold. The entire endeavor is such a long sequence but it alternates between her and her boyfriend,played by Omar Epps, with unbeleivable timing. Add in a rapturous crowd going crazy for Robert Rodriguez’s Stab film, you have a whirpool of tension in every cut. It’s bombastic, loud, and very morbid. The most chilling moments come when Jada’s Maureen has finally fallen on stage, and one by one people in the crowd begin to remove their ghost face masks. These movies are so good at delivering a sobering moment of realization in the midst of its self impsosed mayhem. Courney Cox has never been better in a movie. Never ever. This is the film when I beleive she made Gale Weathers a horror icon. From the look, the the dialouge, to everything. The Weathers/Prescott tandem shootout is one of the best finales I’ve ever seen, featuring one of the more chilling ghost face reveals they’ve ever done. This production was apparently plagued by script leaks, forcing Kevin Williamson to hastily put together a new draft with a new twist. Whoever was the bold soul that blew the whistle on this, we need to find them and thank them. It’s probably the best thing that happened to the franchise. Wihtout this being a success, they easily fall into the Friday the 13th levels of “how many of these fucking things are there?”