Do you like scary movies? If so, good news: Scream 7 hits theaters this Friday, just shy of three years since the release of the last film in the series. But whether you are a new Scream fan or are already well familiar with Ghostface’s bloody antics, it’s possible you have forgotten who survived the carnage.
The upcoming film, helmed by original Scream writer Kevin Williamson, will be a departure from Scream 5 and Scream 6, which revived the franchise and featured both new and returning characters. However, in 2023, Melissa Barrera — who played newcomer Sam Carpenter, the secret daughter of original Ghostface Billy Loomis (Skeet Ulrich) — was controversially fired from the franchise, and Jenna Ortega, who played her sister Tara, chose not to return.
Instead of focusing on those characters, the new movie sees the return of original final girl Sidney Prescott, played by Neve Campbell, who chose not to return to the franchise for Scream 6 due to a financial dispute. The movie focuses on Sidney protecting her daughter, Tatum (Isabel May), after she becomes Ghostface’s next intended victim. Courteney Cox’s dogged reporter Gale Weathers, who has appeared in every film, will be back as well.
But while Scream is slashing in a new direction, it never hurts to brush up on your scary movie knowledge. (You know, just in case Ghostface calls and asks you trivia questions… IYKYK.)
How did ‘Scream’ start? Who was the original Ghostface?
The first Scream, which was released in 1996 and directed by Wes Craven, follows Woodsboro high school student Sidney, whose mother was murdered a year earlier. When two students are brutally killed by a person wearing a Ghostface mask, it reawakens Sidney’s old trauma and makes her reconsider whether Cotton (Liev Schreiber), the man she pointed to as her mother’s murderer, was really innocent. When the killer starts taunting Sidney — and then picking off her friends, one by one — it becomes clear that the killers are sending a message, and that it all ties back to Sidney’s mother’s death.
At the end of the film, Sidney’s boyfriend Billy and his friend Stu (Matthew Lillard) reveal that they are the murderers. They killed Sidney’s mom as revenge for her having an affair with Billy’s dad, and now they want to kill Sidney too.
In true final girl fashion, Sidney is able to kill both Billy and Stu before they can deliver the final blow — all with the help of Gale and Deputy Dewey (David Arquette).
But Scream isn’t just a slasher or a murder mystery: it’s also a commentary on the genre, with each of the characters well aware of the “rules” of the movie that they’re in. Randy (Jamie Kennedy), Sidney’s friend and the franchise’s first movie obsessive, spells out exactly how to survive: Don’t have sex, don’t drink or do drugs, and never say “I’ll be right back,” because, well, you won’t be.
As the franchise goes on, most of the character motivations tie back to “the movies” in some way or another. In Scream 2, for example, one of the killers, Mickey (Timothy Olyphant), says that he’s going to blame onscreen violence in horror movies for his crimes at his upcoming murder trial. (He’s shot and killed by Laurie Metcalf’s Nancy Loomis, the real mastermind behind the operation and Billy’s vengeful mother.) And things get super meta as Scream introduces the Stab franchise — a tongue-in-cheek cinematic version of the events of the Scream movies — that star Tori Spelling and introduce the whole world to Sidney’s trauma.
What happens in the later ‘Scream’ movies? How might they tie into this one?
After Scream 4 hit theaters in 2011, it took more than a decade to see Ghostface back on the big screen. With Craven’s death in 2015, 2022’s Scream 5 was the first to not be directed by the horror filmmaker and set a new path for the franchise.
Scream 5 (marketed as simply Scream) follows Sam, a young woman estranged from her sister, Tara, after a mysterious family falling-out. When Tara is attacked by Ghostface, Sam returns to Woodsboro and meets Tara’s friends — many of whom happen to be relatives of characters from previous Scream movies. That includes Mindy Meeks-Martin (Jasmin Savoy Brown) and Chad Meeks-Martin (Mason Gooding), twins who are the niece and nephew of Sidney’s pal Randy. It’s Mindy who declares that the new crew is in a “requel,” which is a combo of a reboot and a sequel — and it has its own rules to live by.
But it is Sam who has the deepest connection to Scream lore, as she reveals she’s actually the biological daughter of Billy, the killer from the first movie. (Turns out Billy was a bad boyfriend for a lot of reasons, because he also apparently cheated on Sidney in high school.) Sam’s also been seeing hallucinations of her dead dad, and left her family out of concern that she was just as twisted as Billy was.
As Ghostface picks more people off during this round of Woodsboro slashings — including OG character Dewey, estranged from his on-again, off-again love Gale — Sidney returns to town to help Sam deal with the bloodshed. Unfortunately for Sam, she and Sidney have a lot in common: It turns out that Sam’s boyfriend Richie (Jack Quaid) is the killer … and he’s working with Tara’s best friend Amber (Mikey Madison). The reason? They’re disappointed with the direction the Stab franchise is taking and want to create new killings to inspire better films. Meta!
Scream 6, the most recent film in the franchise, follows many of the surviving characters from Scream 5 as they attend college in New York. Unfortunately, a new crop of Ghostface killers make it incredibly hard to enjoy the Big Apple, and Sam must protect her sister yet again.
While Sidney does not return for Scream 6, Gale does — as does Kirby (Hayden Panettiere), a fan-favorite survivor of Scream 4. The killers are ultimately revealed to be family members of Richie from the previous films, an echo of Scream 2, in which Billy’s mother (Laurie Metcalf) was the mastermind of Sidney’s own killings in college.
Scream 6 left Sam and Tara in a safer place, with Sam choosing to see herself as a heroine instead of the child of a Ghostface killer. Now, however, it’s unclear if there will be any additional wrap-up for Sam and Tara, or if Scream 6 was the last time we’ll hear of them. The Meeks-Martin twins, however, are returning to the franchise.
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