Brutal falls, shocking twists, and the moment that broke all the rules
of the franchise. These Scream 6 scenes will stick with viewers for a long time to come.
Ever since the cold shock of the opening moments of the original Scream, fans have known that it's
never too early for characters played by big name actors to be killed off in one of these
films. After all, in an homage to Janet Leigh's premature departure in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho,
the original Craven-directed phenomenon opened with the gruesome death of Casey Becker,
played by the film's most recognizable star at the time, Drew Barrymore.
In typical Slasher style, most films in the franchise have since opened with a murder,
but it's actually been a while since a Scream movie began with the death of one of
its advertised stars. Jada Pinkett's Maureen was murdered in the teaser to Scream 2 back in 1997,
and Liev Shreiber's Cotton Weary was knocked off in the opening of 2000's Scream 3.
Subverting expectations, Scream 4 began with a series of meta misleads before
finally giving the audience its first two kills,
and Jenna Ortega's character actually survived the first Ghostface attack in 2022's Scream.
"There are certain rules to surviving a Stab movie. Believe me, I know."
Scream 6, for its part, appears to play this expectation straight when
it introduces Samara Weaving's Professor Laura Crane, only for her to be murdered
before the opening titles. Crane's stabbing in a Manhattan alleyway is violent and upsetting,
but this alone wouldn't necessarily shock a seasoned Scream fan. This time around,
however, the killer's identity is revealed immediately, and it's quite surprising:
college student Jason Carvey, portrayed by Tom Holland's Spider-Man co-star Tony Revolori.
"Sup, d---wad."
This twist is only setting up the next one, as Jason is dispatched shortly thereafter by the
film's true villain. And just like that, two of the faces on the poster have been dispensed with,
and the film isn't even ten minutes in. Much like the original Scream's opening twist,
such moves put the audience off balance from the very beginning. It's all keeping
with the spirit of Hitchcock, who was so famously devoted to his Psycho secret
that he wouldn't let people enter the theater after the movie began.
Scream 6 establishes Chad, the hunky sweetheart, as a romantic foil to Tara. This feels like
a twist in itself, as the two characters don't get to spend much time together in
the first film while they're fighting for their lives. Even so, actors Mason Gooding
and Jenna Ortega share enough chemistry that it's easy to get onboard this particular ship.
After all, it's been ages since Scream introduced a new romantic relationship
between lead characters. Gale Weathers and Dewey Riley were on and off for five films,
After their first attempt at a kiss is interrupted early in the film,
the pair once again becomes too busy fending off Ghostface attacks to make another. That is,
until the third act, when they finally capitalize on a quiet moment while
waiting for Ghostface to step into a trap they've set up at the killer's secret lair.
Chad gets shanked in the side several more times, buying Tara time to escape.
This appears to be the end for Chad, and it's pretty shocking,
though not as gory as a lot of the film's other kills. The reason for this restraint
is probably because it is not, in fact, a kill. For the second consecutive movie,
Chad appears to be stabbed to death but is eventually carted out of the crime scene
on a gurney, miraculously clinging to life, which takes some of the bite out of the scene.
Scream 6 gives its viewers plenty of notice that legacy characters are on the chopping
block. Resident horror nerd Mindy makes a point of telling the crew that, in the "franchise film"
they're living through, the old guard is basically just here to get killed. The killer gives Gale
the same warning over the phone when he calls her for the very first time in the franchise,
which itself feels like an omen that her story has come to its conclusion.
"There's never been one like me, Gale."
Still, nothing quite prepares a viewer for the violent shock of seeing a beloved character
murdered. Ghostface invades Gale's Manhattan apartment and quickly disposes of her boyfriend,
Brooks. After putting up an impressive fight, nearly outsmarting the killer,
Gale is pinned down on the floor and stabbed in the gut. Sam Carpenter arrives to chase off
Ghostface before he can do any more damage, but the event has an undeniable air of finality to it.
This moment would likely rank higher on the list if audiences didn't learn at the
end of the film that Gale has survived the encounter. Gale has cheated death before,
even walking off a bullet in Scream 2, but her encounter with Ghostface in Scream
6 feels visceral and final when it happens. Turning out to be yet another false alarm,
the scene will probably lose much of its intensity and effectiveness on repeat viewings.
Sam Carpenter, the new series heroine introduced in the fifth Scream film, has a darkness inside
her. The secret daughter of original Ghostface Billy Loomis, Sam is haunted by visions of
her murderous father, and has apparently inherited his predisposition towards violence.
"What's the matter, Sidney? You look like you've seen a ghost."
She keeps a handle on herself through medication and mental discipline,
but she's got a vicious streak that comes out when she's under pressure. Viewers first
saw her cut loose at the end of 2022's Scream, when she repeatedly stabbed her
murderous boyfriend Richie in the brutal fashion typically employed by Ghostface.
In Scream 6, Sam struggles to cope with the sense of satisfaction she felt while butchering Richie,
while being accused of being the real 2022 Ghostface by conspiracy theorists
on the internet. The online rumors turn out to be part of a scheme engineered by Richie's father,
Detective Wayne Bailey, whose end goal is to frame Sam as the new Ghostface.
Bailey traps Sam in a secret Ghostface museum that Richie curated before his death,
whose artifacts include the masks worn by every previous Ghostface. Throughout the film's climax,
Bailey urges Sam to put on the mask of Billy Loomis and fulfill her destiny — by dying in it.
Surprisingly, Sam eventually does choose to put on her father's mask, for only as long as
it takes to kill Bailey Ghostface style, stabbing him multiple times in the face
The Scream series has always offered transparency in wearing its rules on
its sleeve. There is always a Randy or Mindy type to tell viewers what can and
can't happen and to define the danger the characters find themselves in. Typically,
whoever's behind the Ghostface mask is trying to reproduce the experience of being
the villain in a slasher flick, which makes them dangerous, but also predictable to some extent.
"You mean like in Halloween?"
"No, not like in Halloween."
"Oh, sounds a lot like Halloween."
Throughout the run of the franchise, Scream has had one unspoken rule:
When you're wearing the Ghostface mask, you're only allowed to wield a knife. The only times
a Ghostface killer has pulled a gun were after their identity has been been revealed,
never before. Something about the visual would feel unnatural,
like Jason Vorhees holding a shotgun or Captain America grabbing a chainsaw.
In Scream 6, however, the new Ghostface does indeed break the mold. During Sam
and Tara's first confrontation with him on the streets of Manhattan,
the Carpenters seek shelter in a bodega where the shopkeeper attempts to defend his store with
a shotgun. Whereas previous killers might have stabbed the gunman and thrown the firearm away,
this Ghostface has no problem with stealing the weapon and proceeding to shoot up the place.
Footage of a gun-toting Ghostface scandalized Scream fans on social media from the moment
it first appeared in the trailers, and it's no less weird seeing it in the context of the film.
The sense of danger around the familiar movie monster is immediately increased,
at least for the duration of this sequence. Luckily for the protagonists,
Ghostface more or less follows the usual rules for the rest of the film.
As viewers catch up with Mindy Meeks-Martin in the beginning of Scream 6, she's a college freshman,
lounging at a frat party with her new girlfriend Anika. Anika
is immediately cool and likable. Based on previous Scream movies,
this means one of two things: she's secretly the killer, or she's not long for this world.
Sadly, Anika receives perhaps the most brutal death of Scream 6, when Ghostface invades Sam
and Tara's apartment while the rest of the gang is visiting. After Ghostface appears to murder
their roommate Quinn, the survivors are forced to flee the apartment by crawling out a bedroom
window and crossing to a neighbor's place via a narrow ladder over a gap several stories high.
Anika is the last to cross the gap, already badly wounded by Ghostface's
knife. By the time she gets halfway across, Ghostface has broken into the bedroom and
taken hold of the ladder, shaking it violently until Anika loses her grip,
plummeting to the concrete below. The film then offers a close-up on her gnarly, bashed-in head.
Most of the Scream 6 victims and targets are slasher film veterans able to keep themselves
together throughout the violence, but this is Anika's first encounter with a masked killer,
so her terrified and desperate reaction is much closer to your average innocent horror
movie victim. It's par for the course in a horror movie, but the fact that
she's the only character who gets a prolonged, screaming death in Scream 6 makes it hit home.
In a slasher film, it's a necessity that some moments need to be viscerally upsetting to
viewers, and that others need to be triumphant and cathartic for the killer's surviving victims.
However, one of the leads of the rebooted Scream franchise is Sam Carpenter,
who wrestles with some truly psychotic impulses, and her capacity for cruelty is a bit beyond
the average audience's comfort level. During the final confrontation with the three new Ghostfaces,
who turn out to be the late Richie Kirsch's surviving family, Sam shoots her treacherous
roommate Quinn in the head, right in front of her father, Detective Wayne Bailey.
Sam kills Quinn in self-defense, but the figurative twist of the knife comes when
Sam has the gall to smirk about it while standing face-to-face with Bailey. While Bailey is a serial
killer, there's something shocking about the film's hero relishing in the pain of a guy who's
just watched his last two offspring die violent deaths. Sidney Prescott and Gale Weathers could
be pretty cutthroat — they even set a teenager on fire in Scream 5 — but Sam is on another level.
Without question, the greatest cinematic triumph of Scream 6 is in the tooth-grindingly tense
subway sequence, in which Sam, Tara, Chad, and Danny brave a long subway ride crowded
with costumed strangers celebrating Halloween, some of whom are even dressed as Ghostface.
In a protracted, mostly wordless sequence, the heroes attempt to keep an eye on anyone
who might turn out to be a threat, an impossible task as passengers are being
shuffled about at each stop. The killer could be anyone. Finally,
Mindy finds herself cornered at the end of a subway car and gets stabbed in the
abdomen by one of the Ghostface killers while the dozens of strangers around her remain oblivious.
Slasher movies often play on the fear of being caught alone and unaware,
but the subway sequence in Scream 6 speaks to an even more terrible nightmare. Like the murder of
Maureen in the packed movie theater in Scream 2, Mindy's subway stabbing forces the viewer
to acknowledge that one can face mortal danger even with countless people around to witness it.
Of course, like so many of the other disturbing sequences in Scream 6,
this one would feel weightier if Mindy didn't recover from her injuries by the end of the film.
While many viewers will be thrilled that Mindy was not a casualty of the bloodiest Scream to date,
it sure is weird that so little of the film's violence proves fatal.