Why the Scream Franchise Desperately Needs to Stop Killing Off Ghostface

Scream 7 is set to be released in 2026, and the next entry in the series will once again see Neve Campbell plagued by Ghostface. Of course, we have no idea which Ghostface it will be. Across six entries released over nearly 30 years, several different villains have worn the iconic mask, with each one having a different reason to haunt the peaceful town of Woodsboro. While the series has found ways to remain fresh over the years, writers keep having to find reasons for brand-new characters to take up the mantle of Ghostface in a way that remains plausible, and that element has gotten stale. 

Out of all the entries in the series, the beginning of Scream VI gave me one of my most genuine moments of surprise. In the opening minutes of the film, Ghostface unmasks, revealing a new character named Jason Carvey. The audience immediately learns his motivation and is introduced to his killing partner, Greg. I sat in the theater, intrigued to find out how the film would continue without the “whodunnit” element that had been present in every movie since the original. Sadly, my hopes were squashed, as Jason and Greg were quickly killed off by a mystery Ghostface, who wouldn’t be unmasked until the ending. I still found the rest of the movie enjoyable, but that moment cemented my desire for something different from the series. 

The original Scream is one of the true classics of the slasher subgenre. Not only did it provide a compelling mystery with genuine thrills, it also offered a meta-narrative that outlined horror tropes for the audience, gleefully embracing them, and frequently breaking them. In one break with tradition, Scream killed off its murderers, with Billy and Stu given definitive on-screen deaths. As a result, the sequels were forced to bring in new killers with each film, rather than finding some complicated way of resurrecting them, as we had seen so many times before with Michael Myers and Jason Vorhees. However, the franchise’s inability to settle on one Ghostface, even for just a pair of films, has boxed the writers into a corner.

It’s long past time to abandon this formula to find a killer with some sticking power. The brilliance of the original Scream is that it felt terrifyingly plausible, with Billy and Stu making for a clever pair of killers. However, it’s becoming increasingly harder to ignore the implausibility that multiple people would continue to take up the Ghostface mantle. Why would anyone want to wear the costume of a killer with such a limited success rate? Why would these people actively seek out conflicts with Sidney Prescott, knowing that she might have a higher body count after six movies than any Ghostface we’ve seen?

The opening of Scream VI highlights the franchise’s inability to take the big swings needed to move the series forward; every time the series seems like it’s going to do something wildly different, the filmmakers seem to pull their punches. The same thing happened with Scream 4, where it looked like Jill Roberts might survive, only to get a bullet from Sidney right at the end. In that movie, it briefly looked like we were going to get a recurring villain established, and that’s exactly what the series needs to break up the formula. 

A recurring villain would give Sidney a true foil and would push the door wide open for an eighth entry. We could retire the whodunnit element (even if temporarily) to explore a new narrative. Does this villain get exposed and go to prison, returning in a sequel as a Hannibal Lector-type to possibly help Sidney? Or do they go on trial and put on the same defense Timothy Olyphant’s character Mickey wanted in Scream 2? There’s also the possibility that the villain simply gets away with it, or frames someone else, living to stab another day. There are so many possible directions the series could go, if only it were allowed to.

It’s hard to make an iconic slasher villain. There’s a reason we’ve only gotten a handful with real staying power over the last 50 years. Ghostface is one of the few, but the character has so little to cling on to, because the identity has been used by so many different people. In Sidney Prescott, audiences have been given an iconic hero to root for, but we’ve yet to have someone behind the Ghostface mask that we can love the way we love Michael Myers, Freddy Krueger, and Jason Voorhees. In trying to avoid that trope, the series has found itself chained to a completely different one. It’s time for the Scream franchise to level up, and break free from a formula that has gotten far too familiar. 

Do you want Scream to get a recurring antagonist? Are you sick of seeing a Ghostface whodunnit every movie? Share your thoughts with me directly on Twitter at @Marcdachamp, on Bluesky at @Marcdachamp, or on Instagram at @Dachampgaming!