Ranking the ‘ SCREAM’ films
The Scream franchise is one of the finest examples of subversion in terms of slasher films. Wes Craven’s 1996 stone-cold classic ushered in the era of movie characters recognizing that they themselves are in a movie-like plot.
The screenplay for the original film was written by Dawson’s Creek alum Kevin Williamson. It was lauded for its equal pension for laughs and scares and its willingness to poke fun at itself.
That first film broke box-office records and the series remains today one of the highest grossing horror franchises around. With three sequels of varying degrees of quality and a television series that ran for three seasons, Scream is no less than iconic.
Spawning dozens of poor imitators like the I Know What You Did Last Summer and Urban Legend series, Hollywood has been trying to successfully recreate the Scream formula for 25 years now.
With Halloween and movies like Netflix’s Fear Street series and 2020’s Freaky, slasher movies are coming back into the forefront. Now is the perfect time for a sequel, and that sequel comes to theatres today.
Directed by Matt Bettinelli-olpi and Tyler Gillett who helmed the very solid horror flick Ready or Not in 2019, this new Scream is missing the late Wes Craven but retains the three original characters played by Neve Campbell, Courtney Cox, and David Arquette.
Promising equal amounts of gore, laughs, self-criticism, and more than its share of late 90’s genre nostalgia, Scream (2022) is poised to become a great new entry in the slasher canon. To prepare for the release of the new film, here are the first four films ranked from worst to best.