Stab 4

A prequel-style reboot built around a young Gale Weathers, set in a small New Hampshire town long before Hollywood, Windsor College and Woodsboro. Gale is twenty-one and reporting for her college newspaper when her best friend is murdered. Ghost Face exists there as a local urban legend with roots going back to the 1800s. Her investigation leads her to a summer camp getting ready to open for the season, where the legend turns out to be very real.

Stab 4 is the fourth film in the Sunrise Studios Stab series inside the Scream movies. It is the first Stab film that is not based on Sidney Prescott's life. No footage from it has ever been shown. Everything the films say about it comes from a few lines of dialogue and a Gale Weathers prop book made for the film.

In the opening of Scream 4 (2011), Jenny Randall and Marnie Cooper finish watching the start of Stab 7 on DVD. Marnie says the movie-within-a-movie idea is illogical. If the start of Stab 7 is Stab 6, she asks, is the start of Stab 6 Stab 5? And if so, what is Stab 4 about? Jenny tells her she is overthinking it. Marnie never gets an answer, and neither does the audience.

Jenny then explains how the series changed. The first three films, the original trilogy, were based on Sidney Prescott. Sidney threatened to sue if they kept using her story, so the studio just started making stuff up. Stab 4 is where the made-up stories begin. Jenny adds that Stab 5 has time travel and is by far the worst. Nobody in the scene says a word about Stab 4 itself.

Later in Scream 4, a TV host asks Sidney whether the seven Stab movies, all based on Gale Weathers' books about her, have made it harder to move on. That line puts Stab 4 among Gale's books. The book is Knife of Doom. It is a real Scream 4 prop, a dust jacket over another book, and it shows up again with Gale's other books in the Ghost Face shrine in Scream VI.

Scream (2022) muddies the lawsuit story. In the opening phone call, the killer tells Tara Carpenter that Sidney is in every movie but the last one. Read literally, a version of Sidney is in Stab 4 through Stab 7. The Scream Wiki guesses that Tori Spelling kept playing her in some form, or that a new actress took over. No film explains it.

The Scream 4 props team wrote a back-cover plot for the Knife of Doom book, and the Scream Wiki quotes it. Three years after the last Ghost Face spree, Woodsboro is finally at peace. A freak lightning storm hits the town, and Ghost Face's buried remains come back to life. It falls to Ashley Prescott, Sidney's long-lost daughter, to stop him. The blurb is never readable on screen. The wiki treats it as non-canon, since Dewey says in Scream 4 that Gale has only just started trying to write fiction. StabMovies.com treats this plot as unofficial.

StabMovies.com tells the story its own way. Its Stab 4 is a prequel-style reboot built around a young Gale Weathers, set in a small New Hampshire town long before Woodsboro, Windsor College or Hollywood. Gale is twenty-one and reporting for her college newspaper when her best friend is murdered. In that town Ghost Face is a local urban legend going back to the 1800s. Her investigation leads to a summer camp getting ready to open for the season, where the legend turns out to be real. The site casts Elizabeth Banks as the modern Gale, which suggests the older Gale is looking back on what happened. None of this comes from the Scream films. It is the same premise as the StabMovies.com fan film Stab 4: Knife of Doom, released October 10, 2024.

Release & Reception

• Status: Released inside the Scream universe. No footage and no plot has ever been shown in a Scream film.
• Released: No year is given in any Scream film. StabMovies.com dates it 2004. The Scream Wiki gives 2007 in its infobox and 2008 in its trivia (both unconfirmed).
• Runtime: Never stated on screen. The Scream Wiki lists 103 minutes (unconfirmed).

The Scream films never say how Stab 4 did. Jenny Randall calls Stab 5 by far the worst in Scream 4. In Scream (2022), Richie Kirsch says the franchise goes off the rails with number five. Both lines treat Stab 4 as the last entry before things went wrong.

The Scream Wiki calls Stab 4 one of the better sequels, according to Jenny and what Richie implies. Neither character says that in so many words.

By Scream 4, the Woodsboro High Cinema Club runs all seven Stabs back to back every year at the Stab-a-thon. Stab 4 is part of that marathon.

Cast

Crew

Production

Stab 4 exists only as a background joke in Scream 4. Wes Craven directed that film from Kevin Williamson's script, with rewrites by Ehren Kruger during production and more by Paul Harris Boardman. Principal photography began June 28, 2010, in and around Ann Arbor, Michigan. It was set to wrap September 6 after a 42-day shoot and ran until September 24. Reshoots followed test screenings in early 2011.

Wikipedia reports that the cast only got the 140-page script up to page 75, to keep the killer a secret. The Stab 4 line is on the first pages, in the Jenny and Marnie scene.

The Jenny and Marnie part of the opening was reshot. Wikipedia, citing Entertainment Weekly, says Aimee Teegarden, who plays Jenny, came back to the Detroit area in late January and early February 2011 for extra shooting after a January test screening. The Scream 4 alternate opening on the home video release shows a different version of their deaths. SlashFilm's write-up of the extras suggests the Stab 6 and Stab 7 parts before it were not changed.

Inside the story, Sunrise dropped Sidney's life after the original trilogy because she threatened to sue. With no new real killings to adapt, Gale and the studio turned to invented plots. The Scream Wiki suggests Sunrise may first have planned a Stab remake for the tenth anniversary. The wiki gives no source for that.

Props and costumes

Knife of Doom by Gale Weathers, the novel Stab 4 is based on. Premiere Props sold it in its Scream 4 auction on April 16, 2011, as a screen-used Gale Weathers-Riley prop: a Knife of Doom book cover over a copy of Preachers of Hate, about 9.5 by 6.5 inches. More than one copy was sold. The lot wording also includes Sidney Prescott's name.

Bloody Disgusting lists Knife of Doom among Gale's books in a display case in the Scream VI Ghost Face shrine. The Scream Wiki says it is also on Gale's desk in Scream 4.

The prop blurb with Ashley Prescott and the lightning storm. It is quoted on the Scream Wiki and never shown on screen.

A Stab 4 poster. The Scream Wiki runs a Stab 4 poster captioned as coming from Scream VI. Its shrine page lists seven Stab posters in the theater hallway by the snack bar, Stab 4 among them. The wiki also says a Stab 4 poster hangs in the Woodsboro High Cinema Club room in Scream 4. Neither was confirmed outside the wiki.

The Stab box set. The Scream Wiki says a box set of the seven Stab films is seen on DVD in Scream 4, on Blu-ray in Scream (2022), and again in Scream VI. The wiki says the box set lists the film as STAB 4: KNIFE OF DOOM. That was not confirmed outside the wiki.

No music from Stab 4 is heard in any Scream film. The Scream Wiki credits Marco Beltrami, the real composer of Scream 4. Unconfirmed.

Home Media

• In-universe DVD box set of the seven Stab films, seen in Scream 4 (Scream Wiki).
• In-universe Blu-ray box set, seen in Scream (2022) (Scream Wiki).

Images

Artwork