Stab (Stab 8)

Stab tries to relaunch the franchise with a new Ghost Face, a new look, new weapons and new victims, terrorising teenagers on their summer holiday in Woodsboro. It loosely recreates the 2011 Woodsboro killings from Scream 4 and involves Woodsboro police officer Judy Hicks. It came out more than a decade after Stab 7 looked like it had finished the series off.

Stab 8 is the eighth film in the Stab series inside the Scream movies. It dropped the number and came out simply as Stab. It was the first Stab movie in about ten years, after the 2011 Woodsboro murders left the series stopped at Stab 7. In Scream (2022) one of the teenagers remembers the Stab movie that came out last year as the one "the Knives Out guy" directed, which means Rian Johnson.

No full plot for Stab 8 has ever been given. Most of what we know comes from Mindy Meeks-Martin's talk with her friends in Scream (2022). She says hard-core Stab fans hated it. On 4chan and Dreadit, she says, all anyone talks about is how Stab 8 pissed on their childhoods, how it crammed in social commentary just to elevate it, and how the main character is a Mary Sue. Mindy's point is that real Stab movies are meta slasher whodunits, full stop, and Stab 8 was not one.

The only footage is a clip Richie Kirsch watches on his laptop. It shows a Ghost Face in a chrome mask and a new short-sleeved costume, blasting fire from a flamethrower. Matthew Lillard voices that Ghost Face. Around it, fan reaction videos rip into the film. One reviewer brings up Ghost Face's signature new weapon and says "That shit is lit." Then he complains about the title. Why call it Stab, like the original, when it is Stab 8? Richie tells Sam that Mindy wasn't kidding and Stab 8 is not like the others. He says it has no connection to the earlier movies and no legacy characters at all, and that the franchise went off the rails with number five.

Stab 8 is also the only Stab without Sidney Prescott. In the trivia game during the opening attack, Tara Carpenter says Sidney is in every movie but the last one. Later, when Wes Hicks points out that his mother Judy was a character in one of the Stab films, he is told nobody cares about the shitty, inferior sequels. The Scream Wiki reads this as Judy being in Stab 8 and thinks the film is a loose, muddled retelling of the 2011 murders. The line itself only says Judy was in one of the sequels, so that reading is unconfirmed.

Two fans took the backlash further. Amber Freeman says she met Richie on the Stab subreddit. Together they committed new murders in Woodsboro and set up Sam Carpenter, the daughter of original killer Billy Loomis, to take the blame. In the finale Richie asks Sidney if she saw the last Stab movie and says it sucked. He says nobody takes the true fans seriously, so they decided to give Hollywood some new source material and bring Stab back to basics, based on actual events.

The plan failed. Richie and Amber were both killed at the old Macher house, and Gale said they could die in anonymity. Stab 8 is still the last Stab film made. Per the Scream Wiki, its poster turns up in Scream VI, hanging with other Stab posters in the theater hallway outside the Ghostface shrine that Richie's family built.

Release & Reception

• Status: Released inside the Scream universe. A few seconds of trailer footage and a lot of talk about it appear in Scream (2022). Its poster hangs in Scream VI (2023).
• Released: Early 2021 inside the story. In Scream (2022) the characters call it the Stab movie that came out last year. The Scream Wiki gives January 14, 2021, which nothing on screen confirms.
• Runtime: 150 minutes, per the Scream Wiki only (unconfirmed)
• Studio: Sunrise Studios (the studio behind the Stab series; not named on screen for this film)

Inside the story, the core fans hated it. Mindy says 4chan and Dreadit talk about nothing else. Richie's laptop shows negative reviews and a fan campaign to redo the film. One of the friends in Scream (2022) admits to liking it and is told that shows terrible taste.

The backlash spoofs the real fan anger at Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017). Both are the eighth film in a series, both were directed by Rian Johnson, and both were attacked online by some fans.

Johnson took the joke well. In early February 2022 he tweeted a made-up title: SCREAM 8: A BENOIT BLANC MYSTERY. ComicBook.com covered it on February 5, 2022.

Cast

Crew

Production

In the real world, Stab 8 was made up for Scream (2022). That film was directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett of Radio Silence and written by James Vanderbilt and Guy Busick. It shot from September to November 2020 in Wilmington, North Carolina, and opened January 14, 2022, exactly one year after the date the Scream Wiki gives Stab 8.

Co-writer James Vanderbilt told TheWrap (Brian Welk, January 15, 2022) why they made Rian Johnson the director. Johnson had directed a big, divisive franchise film, Star Wars: The Last Jedi, and Vanderbilt said that if a Stab movie was going to be divisive, it would be fun if it were Rian. He also said the small slice of fans who feel they own a franchise and lash out at filmmakers is something that didn't exist ten years ago.

The joke was meant to go further. Tyler Gillett told Variety, as quoted by Screen Rant, that they wanted to shoot a fake ET or Extra style press junket with Johnson. He told Fandom, as reported by NME, that the script said "Rian Johnson, Director of Stab 8." Johnson was off making the Knives Out sequel, Glass Onion, so it did not happen.

Gillett told TheWrap, as reported by SlashFilm, that the YouTube part of the movie was first going to be a clip of Johnson talking about making Stab 8 with Woodsboro survivor Kirby Reed. They held a Zoom call with Hayden Panettiere, but could not get all the pieces in place in time. The Scream Wiki adds that Kirby would have been shown as a filmmaker and that the team did not want to shoehorn her in; those two details come from the fan wiki only.

Effects and makeup

The Stab 8 Ghost Face wears a metallic chrome version of the mask instead of the classic white one, with a short-sleeved costume, and fires a flamethrower in the clip. Fans nicknamed this version Chromeface, and Brian Tyler's Scream (2022) score uses that name for a track.

Props and costumes

Chrome Ghost Face mask, costume and flamethrower, seen in the Stab 8 clip on Richie's laptop in Scream (2022).

A Stab box set is seen in Scream (2022). The Scream Wiki says it is a Blu-ray set of the first seven films with no Stab 8 disc, and that it still carries the Dimension Films logo. Per the wiki, the spines read Stab: The Woodsboro Murders, Stab 2: The Murders Continue, Stab 3: Hollywood Horror, Stab 4: Knife of Doom, Stab 5: Clock of Doom, Stab 6: Ghostface Returns and Stab 7: Knife of the Hunter.

Richie's laptop page is packed with in-jokes, per the Scream Wiki (not checked frame by frame): a Film Fails review by James A. Janisse and Chelsea Rebecca of Dead Meat dated May 7, 2021, with 122,096 views (12/20/96, the release date of Scream); a channel count of 821,939 subscribers (Wes Craven's birthday, August 2, 1939); "Every Stab (2021) Kill Ranked from Worst to Worst"; a StabHead video titled "Not My Stab! Join the StabHead Army and #RedoStab2021!!!"; an interview with Woodsboro survivor Kirby Reed; and a true crime episode asking "Did the Real Stu Macher Survive?"

The Stab 8 poster hangs in the theater hallway by the snack bar outside the Ghostface shrine in Scream VI (2023). The Scream Wiki lists seven posters there: Stab, Stab 2, Stab 3, Stab 4, Stab 5, Stab 7 and Stab (2021).

No score from Stab 8 itself is heard. The Scream Wiki credits the music to John Williams, which is unconfirmed.

Brian Tyler's score for Scream (2022) has a track called "Chromeface," named after the Stab 8 Ghost Face. It is track 18 on the soundtrack album from Varese Sarabande.

Home Media

Stab 8 is established inside Scream (2022) as a released movie, but the film does not identify a home-video format, label, street date or disc contents. No specific VHS, DVD, Blu-ray, 4K or digital edition is treated as canon without a readable on-screen release or official production source.

• NECA Ultimate Ghost Face Inferno, a 7-inch scale action figure based on the Stab 8 flamethrower Ghost Face (2024). It has chrome, white, devil and aged masks, a soft-goods cloak with three hoods, a flamethrower with flame piece, chrome and bloody chrome knives, a pitchfork, two machetes and a knife-wipe hand. Walmart got it first, through the Walmart Collector Con livestream on March 14, 2024, before wider release.

Rian Johnson Directed Stab 8

Podcast Now

On the fact that inside the story it was Rian Johnson who made Stab 8.

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How Much of Scream 5 is Stab 8?

Podcast Now

SPOILERS

Working out what Stab 8 actually is and which parts of the 2022 film come out of it.

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A Fan Made Stab 8 Scene

TA1K

Not real footage. Somebody made this scene themselves and put it out as if it had leaked. It is here because it is the closest thing to Stab 8 footage that exists.

Gallery

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Artwork