A summary of the five movies in the Scream franchise, to prepare fans for the upcoming film. Contains spoilers.

Scream is a well-known Slasher, Horror/Mystery franchise following a series of murders in Woodsboro, California. The rumored culprit is a masked killer in a Halloween costume who coined the name Ghostface. Scream seamlessly pairs terror with humor.

Scream is the type of horror movie to open with first kills and finish with final girls. The first scream movie was released in 1996, starring one of the most well-known final girls of all time, Sydney Prescott, portrayed by Neve Campbell. The franchise took off from there with four additional movies in the years.

These movies follow a set of unofficial rules. One rule is that these killers have a motive. Another rule is the two-killer rule, the fact that every movie has two killers. The third rule is that anyone, even the main character, can die. “And never, ever, ever under any circumstances say, “I’ll be right back,” (spoiler alert: you won’t be back).

First Scream

The first scream starts with Drew Barrymore’s character, Casey Becker, being the opening kill of the movie, and in the franchise all together. The movie follows a masked killer running around a suburban town in California. The killer calls his victims and asks the potential victim’s questions on horror movie trivia claiming if they get it right it may keep them alive. The center of these attracts turn to a teen girl and a group of her friends: final girl Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell), best friend Tatum Riley (Rose McGowan), Sidney’s brother and local police officer Dewy Riley (David Arquette), horror movie enthusiast Randy Meeks (Jamie Kennedy), boyfriends Stu Macher (Matthew Lillard) and Billy Loomis (Skeet Ulrich), and newscaster Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox).

The group each has their own run-ins with Ghostface and some die as a result. They decide to throw a party at Stu Macher’s house and invite the school. Tatum was killed and her brother found her. Tatum tased the masked killer, not taking the situation seriously. Tatum is known for the line, ”oh you wanna play psycho killer? Can I be the helpless victim? Okay let us see…no please don’t kill me Mr. Ghostface, I wanna be in the sequel.” She attempts to fight the killer but fails and dies in the garage door getting squinched by it.

The two ghost faces are revealed to be Billy Loomis, and Stu Macher. They try to make it look as if they were hurt by Ghostface by stabbing themselves. In addition, Stu gets electrocuted by a TV and Billy gets shot by the final girl herself, Sidney Prescott.

Stu states that his motive was “peer pressure” and he was “far too sensitive.” Billy seems to be the only killer without a motive claiming it’s “scarier when there is no motive.”

Sequels: 2-5

The next movies in the sequels scream two through four continue following Sidney as she tries to evade death. The group of the four surviving friends include: Sidney, Dewy, Gale, and Randy. Each new killer uses the same costume and alias, but are different people.

In Scream 2, the killer was a friend of Sidney’s who loved horror movies and wanted to be the star. He was teamed up with Billy’s mom, who wanted revenge for her son.

In Scream 3, there was an exception to the two-killer rule. There was only one killer–Roman Bridger, who corrupted Billy and Stu’s into killing in the first place. His motive was to frame Sidney as a psychopath for being behind all the killings because she is always the ‘sole survivor.’

Roman was also Sidney’s half-brother. Dewy ended Roman’s life after Sidney was attacked and told him to do it. Randy does not last long and dies in the second scream at the hands of Ghostface. After that only three of the trio were left.

Scream Four takes place on the anniversary of the original killings and was back on track with two killers, Sidney’s niece Jill Roberts and a friend of her niece’s, Charlie Walker. Charlie’s motive was that he wanted to make a movie–he recorded all the killings and live streamed them. Jills motive was that he hated all the attention Sidney got from her trauma. Jill ends up killing her own partner, Charlie by stabbing him in the heart. Then she roughs herself up, throws herself through a glass table, and makes herself look innocent after stabbing Sidney.

Jill and Sidney get taken to the hospital and Jill finds out Sidney is still alive. She tries to kill her again but inevitably fails and Sidney electrocutes her. Sidney takes Dewy’s gun and shoots her and she dies officially.

In Scream Five we are introduced to multiple new characters. Two of them are Randy’s relatives: Chad and Mindy Meeks-Martin. We also meet the son of Stu’s sister, Vince Shnider, however Shnider does meet his end when he comes face to face with Ghostface. In addition, we meet Sam Carpenter who is revealed to be Billy Loomis’ daughter. Sam has a half-sister named Tara portrayed by Jenna Ortega. Both girls survive the attacks.  So do Chad and Mindy Meeks-Martin, the originals Gale Weathers, and Sidney Prescott.

Scream 6

Based on what we know about Scream 6, the Carpenters and the Meeks are in New York City but are faced with another Ghostface. The new Ghostface has a rifle at some point as well as a black knife as opposed to the original silver one, Ghostface also says “I’m different” in the trailer when Gale tells him he’ll inevitably fail like all the others.

The masked killer also has some sort of shrine to the previous assailants and victims. One of the things fans have against this new scream movie is that the actor Neve Campbell will not be returning to the cast.
The fans wonder how there will be a movie without Sidney, the girl that started it all. Scream VI releases on March 10th, 2023.