Scream: The ultimate ranking of the beloved horror franchise’s five films so far

It’s one of the most popular fright-inducing film franchises of all-time.

A series that began with a blockbusting, crowd-pleasing movie that helped revive interest in the then virtually moribund horror genre more than 26 years ago.

Yes, with 1996’s Scream, veteran horror director Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson (the man who would go on create Dawson’s Creek) not only made fun of “the rules” around slasher flicks like Halloween, Friday the 13th and When a Stranger Calls, they also created an iconic boogeyman for at least one generation – in look, if not in character.

As the sixth installment reaches Kiwi cinemas this week, Stuff to Watch takes a look back at the five flicks released so far, to produce the ultimate ranking of Ghostface’s misadventures and murderous mayhem to date.

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* Wes Craven’s New Nightmare: TVNZ reminds us, before Scream, there was sheer terror
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* Why we loved Wes Craven

Scream 3 (2000, iTunes, Google Play, YouTube)

To be fair, this somewhat disappointing threequel was compromised by real-life events.

Releasing less than 10 months after the horrific Columbine High School massacre, Craven and new screenwriter Ehren Kruger (replacing Williamson, who, at the time, was in huge demand) perhaps wisely decided audiences would prefer them to take a lighter tone and create more of a “whodunit”, than an out-and-out horror (although Craven still apparently had battles with US film censorship body the Motion Picture Association of America that saw him threaten to quit movie-making altogether – he wouldn’t make another flick until the 2005 duo of Cursed and Red Eye).

Unfortunately, the result was rather muddled, not helped by news that a parody – Scary Movie – was just months away from screening.

The setting is five years after the original Woodsboro murders, with survivor Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) breaking her self-imposed isolation to head to Hollywood after Ghostface begins killing the cast of the movie Stab 3.

Scream (2022, Neon)

Tara Carpenter (Jenna Ortega) was the most recent Woodsboro, California teen to find herself home alone and harassed by an unknown caller asking her “if she likes scary movies”.

Threatening the life of her best friend Amber (Mikey Madison) if Tara doesn’t play ball, “the voice” asks her a series of questions about the Stab series of films inspired by the horrific events in the town all those years ago. When she stumbles on the final hurdle regarding who the original Ghostface killer was, she attempts to warn Amber, only to find someone wearing that memorable mask waiting at her front door with a knife.

Attracting old fans, let alone scaring up a whole new audience, was always going to be a challenge for directorial duo Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett. However, thanks to a combination of clever twists on the Craven and Williamson template and the same visceral thrills, tension-building and swagger that marked their last outing Ready or Not, they managed to craft a worthy instalment suitable for a time when smartphones, elevated horror and re-quels are all the rage.

Scream 4 (2012, iTunes, GooglePlay, YouTube)

A decade of Hollywood “recycling the same predictable crap, with no element of surprise” certainly gave Craven and series screenwriter Williamson something to chew on, which they took to with glee in this post-post-modern, meta-meta-meta (this time there’s even a movie-within-a-movie-within-this-movie) subversive horror Shriekquel.

On screen, one generation’s tragedy had become a joke. When two high-school students are murdered in the style of the Ghostface killer, the rest of the student body think it is like something out of the Stab movies, or Gale Weather’s (Courtney Cox) book, rather than inspired by the original killings. The deaths also mysteriously coincide with the return of original killing spree survivor Sidney.

In a genre where everything has been “done to death” and the modern audience is so savvy and cynical that the unexpected is now cliché, Craven certainly had a good stab at reinventing horror and its “rules”. Having said that, Scream 4 is still very much a celebration of old-school scares.

Scream 2 (1997, iTunes, GooglePlay, YouTube)

The blood had barely dried from the original movie when Craven and Williamson returned to Woodsboro.

While teen survivors Sidney and Randy (Jamie Kennedy) had moved on and away, Gail’s best-selling book about the events has been turned into a movie entitled Stab. However, when two people are slain in front of a packed audience at the premiere, it becomes clear that someone is out to create a real-life sequel.

If Scream was lightning in a bottle that couldn’t strike twice, nobody told Craven. If the chills aren’t quite as spectacular as the first time around, there’s compensation in the form of additional laughs. Knowing references to other horror movies are complimented by parodies of the first film’s conceit and some brilliant casting for the film-within-a-film (especially Tori Spelling taking on the Drew Barrymore role).

There’s even a smart debate about the link between movies and violence.

Scream (1996, iTunes)

Arguably Craven had already had a dry run before tackling the movie that would win him a whole new army of fans.

In 1994, he made a surprise return to the fiend that first really put him on the map – A Nightmare on Elm Street’s Freddy Krueger – with a take that was self-aware, reverential to the “rules” and yet more than happy to smash them when needed. After a decade of knock-offs, diminishing sequels and placing humour above horror, Wes Craven’s New Nightmare brought sheer terror back to movie theatres and made it feel real.

Thanks to Williamson’s sharp script, Scream, though, was on another level. Right from the stunning Barrymore-starring opening set piece, involving a babysitter having to deal with a caller wanting to know her favourite scary movie, Scream set out its stall as a smart, clever, tense, unnerving tale that was keen to subvert audience expectations at every opportunity.

Inspired by the real-life, 1990 reign of terror of the Gainesville Ripper, it saw a group of teens being stalked by “Ghostface”, a black-robed killer wearing a mask seemingly inspired by Edvard Munch’s most famous painting.

But while Sidney, Randy, Billy (Skeet Ulrich), Stu (Matthew Lillard) and others struggle to stay alive with the help of news reporter Gail and deputy sheriff Dewey Riley (David Arquette), they begin to suspect the killer could come from within their own peer group.

Still surprising, funny and nightmare-inducing more than a quarter-of-a-century on.

After advance previews in select cinemas this evening (Wednesday), Scream VI will screen nationwide from March 9.