With the premiere of the Scream TV series tonight, it’s time to take a look back at the most famous character of the Scream movie franchise: Ghostface. Ghostface, the identity taken on by seven different characters throughout four different movies, spends a ridiculous amount of time and energy stalking Sidney Prescott and the people close to her. While all ultimately fail in their goal of killing Sidney, they all reach varying degrees of success wreaking terror and havoc. Check out our ranking of the true identities of the Scream killers. Be warned: MAJOR spoilers ahead.
*All gifs are from Tumblr
ROMAN BRIDGER (Scott Foley), Scream 3
“Your boyfriend didn’t like seeing his daddy in my film too much. He didn’t like it at all. And once I supplied the motivation…all the kid needed was a few pointers. Have a partner to sell out in case you got caught, find someone to frame, it was like he was making a movie…I’m a director, Sid, I direct. I had no idea that they were gonna make a film of their own. I mean introducing Sidney the victim, Sidney the survivor, SIDNEY THE STAR!“
Roman, director of the failed film-within-the-film Stab 3, reveals himself to be Sidney’s half-brother and the secret child Maureen had rejected. To seek vengeance on the mother who never wanted him, Roman seeks out young Billy and Stu, instructing them on the fine art of covert serial killing before donning the Ghostface identity himself at the conclusion of the first trilogy. Ultimately, Roman is a little too much of a moustache-twirling villain for my taste; in a horror franchise that tries their best to keep the killers grounded in reality, his story stretches the world’s plausibility.
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CHARLIE WALKER (Rory Culkin), Scream 4
“Well, if you want to be the new, new version, the killer should be filming the murders…making your art as immortal as you.”
While he’s not very high on the list, I have to give Charlie some points for his big reveal. After Kirby (Hayden Panettiere) “saves his life” by answering the killer’s horror movie trivia, Charlie brutally stabs her for not noticing him over the years. It’s a great twist; the scene is set up just like when Casey Becker (Drew Barrymore) attempted to save her boyfriend Steve in the infamous first scene of Scream. Charlie makes a decent Ghostface, but his obsession with the past knocks him down a few pegs and ultimately leads to his downfall. Sorry Charlie—we give points for originality here.
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JILL ROBERTS (Emma Roberts), Scream 4
“My friends? What world are you living in? I don’t need friends. I need fans. Don’t you get it? This has never been about killing you. It’s about becoming you…sick is the new sane.”
I have to say, Scream 4 has some impressive twists. Jill was marketed as the central character and victim, just as Drew Barrymore was for the first Scream. Rather than a quick kill like Casey, Jill is revealed to be one of the killers, one with an interesting motive at that. Jill plans to replace Sidney as Woodsboro’s famous victim—only she plans on milking it for all it is worth. The little psycho creates her own Scream world in which she kills her ex-boyfriend Trevor and her accomplice Charlie, pinning the murders on them and making them this generation’s Billy and Stu. Ultimately, hubris leads to Jill’s downfall; she becomes sloppy, failing to kill Sidney and slipping up in front of Gayle. I have to dock some points for that—no other Ghostface revealed their identity on any terms but their own.
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DEBBIE SALT/MRS. LOOMIS (Laurie Metcalf), Scream 2
“Was that a negative, disparaging remark about my son? About my Billy? It’s not wise to patronize me with a gun, Sidney! Randy spoke poorly of Billy and I got a little knife-happy.”
Mrs. Loomis proved to be one of the best reveals in the Scream franchise. Billy’s mother’s motive was another case of straight up revenge; her desire to kill Sidney was a direct result of Billy’s death at her hands. Her protection over her son’s memory is insane—when Randy insults him over the phone, she drags him into a van and viciously stabs him to death. I would argue that Mrs. Loomis is the most dedicated of the bunch, so much so that she plucks Mickey out of the Future Serial Killers of America chat room and sends him to college to befriend and stalk Sidney. Bonus points for a Friday the 13th throwback.
MICKEY ALTIERI (Timothy Olyphant), Scream 2
“Bullshit generalization. Many sequels have surpassed their original.”
Friend to Sidney and accomplice to Mrs. Loomis, Mickey is one of the most interesting Ghostfaces in the franchise. He’s the perfect foil to Billy; as he says himself, “Billy was a sick fuck who tried to get away from it. Mickey is a sick fuck who wants to get caught.” Besides a desire for infamy, Mickey has no motive. He’s just a casual psychopath who plans on blaming the movies, going in direct opposition to Billy’s claim in the first film that “Movies don’t create psychos. Movies make psychos more creative!” Mickey insists that sequels can be better than their original—a fact he’s trying to make true to life as Ghostface.
STU MACHER (Matthew Lillard), Scream
“Because there’s no way a girl could have killed them…takes a man to do something like that.”
Stu is your average, douchey high school dude who happens to kill his classmates because his best friend wants to. Stu is callous, absurd, and obsessed with proving himself as a man. When Sidney inquires about his motive, he gives a great response, considering he’s butchered several people: “Peer pressure. I’m far too sensitive.” He proceeds to cry upon finding out that Sidney called the cops, explaining how mad his parents are going to be. Stu is merely Billy’s psychotic, misogynistic follower.
BILLY LOOMIS (Skeet Ulrich), Scream
“Now Sid, don’t you blame the movies. Movies don’t create psychos. Movies make psychos more creative!”
Ah, Billy. The mysterious, brooding bad boy of many 90s girls’ dreams. In order to get revenge on Sidney’s mother for breaking up his parents’ marriage, Billy decides to create his own horror movie—starting with her rape and murder, then carrying on with a bloodbath that was supposed to end with Sidney’s death a year later. He is so obsessed with following the horror movie rules that he only attempts to kill Sidney once she loses her virginity to him, convinced that only then is she truly vulnerable to an attack. One of the aspects that made Billy and the first Scream so great was how obvious it was that he was the killer—he says a ton of questionable statements, obsessed with Sidney’s sexuality while she’s dealing with grief and PTSD from her mother’s murder; he’s arrested by the police after Sidney is attacked by Ghostface the first time; and he and Stu full-on threaten Randy in the video store. He’s just as much of a horror movie fanatic as Randy, only his obsession is about blurring the lines between reality and the movies.
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