The Scream series is soon to receive its fifth entry and what better way to celebrate its release than to revisit all of the film entries in the franchise and rank them? 

The fifth entry, confusingly called simply Scream will be the first to not feature the writer/director partnership of Kevin Williamson  and Wes Craven (who died in 2015). It instead is from the talented director double act that brought us the brilliant Ready Or Not – Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett. 

So read on to hear what I think of each film before I rank them in my order of preference…

Scream (1996) 

A year after the brutal rape and murder of her mother, high school student Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) is terrorised by another killer who wants to play a brutal game. 

When Scream released it was a cultural phenomenon. At a point in time when horror movies had got stuck in a slasher movie rut filled with derivative sequels along came a film written by a hot new young writer and delivered with huge amounts of skill from an old directorial hand. Kevin Williamson’s debut as a screenwriter contained horror movie characters who were aware of horror movies and what they should and should not do. Whilst director Wes Craven probably most famous for ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street’ had all the smarts to deliver a brutally shocking film that was most importantly smart and funny. 

Opening with a now famous iconic scene and question, “Do you like scary movies?” our film makers proceeded to kill off the films biggest star before the title screen appears. If Drew Barrymore can die what else can happen? They then proceed to tell the entire story in a 24 hour timeframe where our protagonists watch horror movies and discuss the rules that they should be following. Jamie Kennedy’s Randy delivering his speech about the rules in horror movies is another classic moment. Of course then our characters will proceed to then break them at every turn, “I’ll be right back!” 

There are also lots of self referential moments for horror movie fans throughout with the most overt being a janitor named Freddie dressed as Elm Street’s famous terroriser (played by director Wes Craven of course) whilst another character references “Wes Carpenter” movies, an amalgamation of Wes Craven and John Carpenter’s names (the characters will watch his film Halloween at one point in the film as well). 

Performance wise everyone nails their jobs as well. Neve Campbell plays innocent but determined, Rose McGowan plays the dumb bombshell, Courteney Cox plays trashy reporter, David Arquette plays naïve sheriff’s deputy and Skeet Ulrich plays creepy boyfriend. But the star of the show is Matthew Lillard as the crazy comic relief friend who has no filter on what would be appropriate to say in the circumstances. 

Twenty-Six years since its release the only thing that truly dates it is the fact that cellular phones are considered a rarity whilst landlines play a big part in the plot. 

A true horror classic. 

Scream 2 (1997) 

Two years after the events of the first film and Sidney (Neve Campbell) is now at college with fellow survivor Randy (Jamie Kennedy) and some new friends. But someone else has donned the ‘Ghostface’ mask and another string of killings begin. 

As with the original, Scream 2 opens with a brutal murder. This time at a film screening of ‘Stab’, the film based on Gale Weather’s (Courtney Cox) book of Woodsboro murders. Unlike in the first film though, other than doubling the murder count it is not nearly as impressive. If I am honest the main thing that caused me stress as we watch Jada Pinkett Smith and Omar Epps get killed is the awful behaviour of the people in the cinema. Thank heavens I was not at that screening! 

Of course any sequel to the self aware Scream is going to make comments on its film roots and the fact it is a sequel. We get to see Randy discuss the rules of sequels in his film class along with a conversation about the fact that with a few rare exceptions sequels are inferior to the originals. In fact the concept of the original being made into a film, getting to see segments of it and the argument about whether or not violence in films leads to violence in real life is a really clever idea for the film and adds some funny moments as well. We get to see Heather Graham take on Drew Barrymore’s role whilst the gag in the first film that Tori Spelling will play Sidney comes to fruition and we get to see her replay a scene from the original alongside Luke Wilson. Whilst the idea of a horror film questioning the notion that it is responsible for people being violent is about as meta as you can get, before everyone talked about things being meta. 

The number of faces that you will recognise in this feature is pretty impressive as well. With the likes of Portia De Rossi, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Joshua Jackson, Timothy Olyphant and Jerry O’Connell all making appearances of different sizes. Some of these characters are cannon fodder and some are thrown into the pool of possible murderers including Liev Schreiber who gets a much more expanded role as Cotton Weary. His character taking on the interesting quality of wanting to be famous following his acquittal as a result of the world discovering he is not a murderer. 

Our main three leads are up to the task again as well. Sydney is much more determined, whilst there are hints at a failed but still unresolved relationship between Gale and Dewey. 

Overall it is a good sequel. It ups the swearing and violence quotients but still makes some fun and clever story decisions. But just like they discuss in film class it is an inferior product to the original. 

Scream 3 (2000)

With Hollywood making Stab 3, the final part of the Woodsboro murders trilogy the ‘Ghostface’ killer emerges again to attack the cast and crew of the film. 

The third film, just like the film within a film Stab was meant to be the final part in a trilogy. Whilst Kevin Williamson only has a “characters by” credit here and the film is written by Ehren Kruger it does continue to focus on the idea of how horror films influence each other and play to specific rules. What it does not do though is actually focus on Scream’s main character. Whilst the killer’s reason for existing still relates to Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) for the majority of this film she is sidelined as a bit player. The film instead choosing to focus on Gale Weathers (Courtney Cox) and Dewey Riley (David Arquette). 

Dewey is now a special advisor on the Stab film and in a relationship with the actress playing Gale (Parker Posey) in the film. When the real Gale appears to help investigate the killings this sets up probably the most fun aspect of the film with the two Gale Weathers working together to find the killer. Whilst Posey is probably the stand out performance in the entire film.

They even come up with a clever mechanism to have Jamie Kennedy return to give us rules for the trilogy whilst mocking the idea of it by telling us they had to recast Stab because the actors would not return for a third. They play around with the voice modulator the killer uses and have a really good opening kill featuring a fairly important character from the trilogy. 

So there are lots of clever things in play, but moving the focus away from Sidney creates a big hole in the heart of the film. There is also the unfortunate issue of having a ‘Hollywood casting couch’ plot line in a film produced by Harvey Weinstein and a move to some broader comedy. A cameo from Carrie Fisher is quite amusing but having Jay (Jason Mewes) and Silent Bob (Kevin Smith) is just bizarre. 

Overall then the idea of diminishing returns in sequels is starting to rear its head here. 

Scream 4 (2011)

Ten years after the events of the last film and Dewey (David Arquette) and Gale (Courteney Cox) are married and living back in Woodsboro whilst Sidney (Neve Campbell) is about to return for the first time on her book tour for ”Out Of Darkness”. Unfortunately though, what better time for ’Ghostface’ inspired killers to begin another murder spree than right now?

Scream 4’s opening kill is great fun and gives us a good indicator of how much more of a return to its original roots this film is compared to 3. In fact the opening kill is actually three different scenes taking in Stab 5, Stab 6 and the real life happenings in the real world giving us a total of five killings and cameos for Anna Paquin and Kristen Bell.

Whilst the film’s focus is again back on Sidney with Dewey and Gale giving ample support another clever tweak it makes is to take us back to Woodsboro High School, where if you look carefully you will see a statue commemorating Henry Winkler’s principal from the first film. And because this is being talked about as a reboot the characters in the high school give us variations on those from the original film. The most obvious being Sidney’s cousin Jill (Emma Roberts) as her double and Charlie (Rory Culkin) as the film club geek who knows everything about scary movies as the double for Randy. Although it does give us one of the more annoying characters to grace a horror film in Robbie Mercer (Erik Knudsen) a guy who wears a webcam to live stream his day to his fans.

In terms of clever self referential moments the film makes a joke about being meta, needing to flip the rules because it is a reboot and add more blood and gore to keep up with the likes of the Saw films. Also as it is 2011 mobile phones are now prevalent and people are talking about becoming famous thanks to streaming rather than actually needing to put in any effort.

There are a lot of famous faces in this film as well thanks to its popularity but the most fun performances worth mentioning are from Alison Brie as Sidney’s book publicist with no soul and Hayden Panettiere as the best friend who is not just a pretty face.

This is slicker and more intelligent than the third outing and would probably have made a better completion of the trilogy than that film did.

Ranking

1. Scream
2. Scream 2
3. Scream 4
4. Scream 3

What an anti-climax! I was close to just listing the films in order of release but I really feel that the move to focus on Gale and Dewey in the third film really made it lose its focal point. If on the other hand my rating was based on Courteney Cox’s hair style I am going to have to say 4, 2, 1, 3. Watching the films back to back was a lot of fun but really just proves how good the original is. Roll on Scream (5).