Released less than a year apart, ‘Scream’ (1996) and ‘Scream 2’ (1997) offer two adjacent but opposing takes on the horror genre, and the franchise they’re setting the tone for –further developed by ‘Scream 3’ (2000). In many ways these are two distinct stories torn apart due to success, one local, the other national. The catalyst and the fall out. While the first two films were originally pitched together, they feel markedly separate in their scope. The dissonance that many may feel between them is unintentional, but a key piece of the Scream experience.
These films may have begun within the world of horror, but quickly moved into their own reality.
Within the franchise, there is one constant, and that is the role of media and it’s impacts on the murder sprees (plural, babes, plural) that orbit Sidney Prescot. Her life is a book, and then a movie, and then a franchise. She’s captured in press coverage and rumours. But at the centre of it all is Gale Weathers.
If Sidney is the heart of the franchise, Gale is the brains.
To keep it short and sweet, Gale Weathers is a journalist whose career from the first film onwards is built around documenting the murders of Woodsboro, initially starting with Maureen Prescott, and then following those concerning her daughter. While in the first film her interest is primarily fame based (and, I guess, journalism), her real concern for this young girl (and a goofy cop – ew and RIP) help her evolve into both the story and storyteller. In the following films she sells the rights to the story, which becomes a shlocky slasher franchise, tangentially related to the murders she documents, but separating when the source material isn’t frequent enough.
In the previous instalment of SCRARCH, I touched upon Wes Craven’s film prior to ‘Scream’ (1996), his 1994 reboot/requel/sequel to the ‘Nightmare on Elm Street’ saga, ‘Wes Craven’s New Nightmare’ (1994). Built around the significance of the film franchise, this is, in many ways, an ambitious first attempt at what the second and third Scream films offer in terms of meta jabs at both slashers as a subgenre, and ‘Scream’ as a piece of cultural iconography. But the key difference between the two franchises is the world building. ‘Nightmare on Elm Street’ requires a level of fantasy to make the horror come to life, but there’s nothing unbelievable about ‘Scream’.
Well, except for the magic voice changer.
Gale is the catalyst for all of this. Every murder from the second film onwards is built upon the foundation of her coverage, book, and films. Jada Pinkett-Smith literally dies on in the front of the movie screen that plays Stab, bleeding out as onlookers struggle to separate fiction and reality. When the question of help is asked, they simply point out that it was an event. The film was being projected, fake knives were everywhere, and two people died because of it. Literal copycat killings – the nightmare of every conservative mother of the era.
It is in this world that Sidney lives in the second film. She’s theoretically moved on, but in reality, is reminded every day of the danger she was in and could still be in. If Heather Langenkamp in ‘Wes Craven’s New Nightmare’ is haunted by her role in the first film, she at least had the agency in that. It was fiction, and while the horror is coming alive, there is no trauma to be held at bay. But in ‘Scream 2’, Sidney is a survivor of these stories that are now horror films. The introduction of the Stab franchise is retraumatising to her.
Something that was not regularly touched upon in critical takes of these films, is the callousness of having these murders regularly restaged for these survivors to come across. In recent years, we have seen real-life examples of the families of victims coming out against retellings of their lives. In the wake of Ryan Murphy’s series ‘Dahmer’ last year, Rita Isbell spoke about her pain concerning the show in an essay to Insider. Having the death of her brother Errol Lindsey recreated in a show that saw viewers empathising –or even lusting– after his killer, was not something that she wanted, nor was she consulted.
“If I didn’t know any better, I would’ve thought it was me. Her hair was like mine, she had on the same clothes. That’s why it felt like reliving it all over again. It brought back all the emotions I was feeling back then.” – Rita Isbell
The third film takes the this to the root – Hollywood.
I’m not sure how to describe the third ‘Scream’ film. Yes, “campy” is an obvious adjective, but that feels oddly limiting. It’s referential and outwards looking, as they all are, but it’s also oddly prescient. The film’s biggest tragedy (that isn’t murder) doesn’t lay at the end of a knife, but in the past. Maureen Prescott is given the most attention she has ever been given, and it’s telling that the story they touch upon is one of abuse, coercion, and abandonment.
Killers in this franchise are outward looking – just kids crying out for attention in the bloodiest way possible. But in ‘Scream 3’, we get a decidedly more adult and internal kind of motivation. The media is still present in very obvious ways (they’re literally on a set) but Roman Bridger isn’t interested in his story being known. It’s the spark, not the fire.
As the franchise became bigger, the pain points that drove the killers continued to remain small, and in many ways shrunk. Billy and Stu had grander ambitions, as did Mrs Lumis and Mickey, but Roman has no such interest. He’s already famous. That driving force is revenge for being forgotten, not the reward of being remembered.
Sidney Prescott is a walking ball of anxiety who’s pain comes, as it turns out, entirely from Hollywood. Her brother is driving everything in the first and third films, and the second exists in a world where his industry is already capitalising off of his actions. It's an incredibly silly twist, but it does feel poignant in the context of the franchise as it was by the third film. Later sequels are interested in legacy, but this third film is messy but introspective. This is the outcome of the previous films’ stories, not the succession to them. It was written and conceptualised as the finale.
And again, driving the narrative forward, is Gale.
Gale spends the third movie as essentially a failure. She’s not made for Hollywood. When her movie equivalent (Parker Posey as Jennifer in the role of a lifetime) mocks her for losing out on “60 Minutes 2”, she stands more than a little shocked, eyes going from daggers to shields, bangs flying everywhere. They’re hitting at each other, but Jennifer has nothing to be ashamed about. She’s a success. The one barb about being broken up with by Brad Pitt (good for her!) falls even flatter when Dewey shows up.
For her!
But even as she’s clearly drowning in Hollywood, she’s built for murder-solving. Journalism. At her heart, Gale Weathers is a journalist and reporter, and the film basically follows her building her own confidence up. But it’s a tell for sure that she never really solves anything. She finds the clues, but the puzzle pieces don’t fit together until the end. Much like in every film, she’s on the right path, but it’s Sidney who has the truth revealed before she can do anything.
Will she be able to put it together in time without her in the new film?
And then ‘Scream VI’ (2023) happened!