Scream

Twenty-five years after Billy Loomis and Stu Macher's killing spree, high school student Tara Carpenter is home alone in Woodsboro when the landline rings. The caller chats about horror movies, then makes her play Stab trivia to save her best friend Amber. Tara misses the last question by forgetting that Stu was Billy's partner. Ghostface gets into the house past the smart lock, stabs her repeatedly and breaks her leg, and she ends up in the hospital alive.

Tara's older sister Sam, who left town five years earlier, hears about the attack while working in Modesto and drives back with her boyfriend of six months, Richie Kirsch. At the hospital she meets Tara's friends: Wes Hicks, son of Sheriff Judy Hicks; Liv McKenzie; Amber Freeman; and twins Chad and Mindy Meeks-Martin. That night Liv's creepy ex Vince Schneider, Stu Macher's nephew, is killed by Ghostface outside a bar. Sam hallucinates Billy Loomis in a hospital mirror, is attacked by Ghostface, and then tells Tara the truth: she found their mother's diaries as a teenager and learned Billy was her real father. That discovery broke up their parents and is why she left.

Sam and Richie go to Dewey Riley, who is retired, divorced from Gale and living alone. He turns them down at first, then calls Sidney Prescott to warn her and texts Gale. He changes his mind and joins the teenagers at the Meeks-Martin house, where their mother is Martha Meeks, Randy's sister. Mindy works out that the killer is making a requel: a new generation of victims tied to the original, with Sam's link to Billy used to pull the legacy survivors back in. The group suspects Sam, and she storms out.

Ghostface calls Judy while she is out getting dinner and says he is watching Wes. She races home and is stabbed to death in her front yard. Inside, Wes is stabbed through the throat. Gale arrives in town to cover the murders and reunites with Dewey. Sam realizes the deputy assigned to Tara is at the Hicks crime scene, and she and Dewey race to the hospital. Tara finds her guard, Deputy Clay, with his throat cut. Ghostface slashes Richie, then taunts Sam on the phone. Dewey shoots Ghostface five times and sends the others away, but goes back to finish the job. When his phone rings with a call from Gale, Ghostface gets up and kills him with two knives.

Sidney comes back to Woodsboro after hearing Dewey is dead. She asks Sam to help end it, but Sam wants to get Tara out of town. Sidney has put a tracker on Richie's car. On the way out, Tara needs the spare inhaler she left at Amber's house, which turns out to be Stu Macher's old house, where a party is being held in Wes's memory. Chad is lured outside by texts from Liv's phone and stabbed. Ghostface attacks Mindy while she watches Randy's scene from Stab. The survivors gather and argue about who the killer is, and Amber pulls Dewey's revolver and shoots Liv in the head.

Sidney and Gale arrive. Amber shoots Gale and runs back inside. Sidney fights Amber over a banister, and when Sam grabs the dropped gun Richie stabs her, revealing himself as the second killer. Amber and Richie take Sam, Sidney and Gale into the kitchen where Billy and Stu once confronted Sidney. They met on a Stab message board, both hated Stab 8, and planned a real massacre to give the franchise new source material, with Sam framed as Billy's daughter out for revenge.

Tara, untied by Sam, attacks Amber with a crutch. Sidney and Gale fight Amber. Gale shoots her three times and she falls onto the lit stove and catches fire. Richie chases Sam, who sees Billy in a mirror, grabs a knife, and stabs Richie over and over before slitting his throat. When Sidney warns her the killer always comes back, Sam shoots him three times. A burned Amber charges them one last time and Tara shoots her in the head. Tara, Chad and Mindy go to the hospital. Gale decides not to write about the killers and to write a tribute to Dewey instead. The film ends with a card that reads For Wes.

Story notes

• The rules: You can't just reboot it, it has to be a requel.
• The rules: Legacy characters are only there to be killed off in a cheap bid for nostalgia.
• The rules: Never trust the love interest.
• Survivors: Sidney Prescott · Gale Weathers · Sam Carpenter · Tara Carpenter · Mindy Meeks-Martin · Chad Meeks-Martin

Release facts

• Status: Released. the Red Carpet Premiere Set for January 11, 2022 Was Canceled Because of the Omicron Wave of Covid-19.
• Rated: R for strong bloody violence, language throughout and some sexual references
• Worldwide: $138,874,789 per The Numbers; about $138 million per Wikipedia

Paramount released Scream on January 14, 2022. It made $13.3 million on its first day, including $3.5 million from Thursday previews, and opened to $30 million ($33.8 million over the four-day Martin Luther King Jr. Day weekend). That knocked Spider-Man: No Way Home out of first place for the first time. The opening audience was 53% male and 67% between 18 and 34.

It fell 58.7% to $12.2 million in its second weekend, second behind No Way Home, and left the top ten in its tenth weekend. Overseas it opened to $17.9 million from 50 markets. The Numbers lists $81,641,405 domestic and $57,233,384 international for $138,874,789 worldwide on a $24 million budget. Deadline estimated a net profit of $56.7 million.

Rotten Tomatoes has 76% from 300 reviews with an average of 6.6/10; its consensus says the fifth Scream works harder than ever to keep its meta edge and succeeds surprisingly often. Metacritic gives 60 from 49 critics. CinemaScore audiences gave a B+, and PostTrak audiences were 79% positive.

Aedan Juvet of Screen Rant called it an excellent modern slasher. Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune placed it halfway between the 2018 Halloween and Halloween Kills. Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian and Wenlei Ma of News.com.au each gave three out of five, Ma saying it was funny but rarely scary. Jeannette Catsoulis of The New York Times was negative about the fan service. The Hollywood Reporter and Elle praised Neve Campbell. Jordan Peele called it clever and fun on The Ringer's The Big Picture podcast in July 2022.

Awards: nominated for Best Horror at the Hollywood Critics Association Midseason Film Awards; Jenna Ortega won Most Frightened Performance at the 2022 MTV Movie and TV Awards, where the film was nominated for Best Movie; nominated for The Drama Movie of 2022 at the People's Choice Awards; nominated for Studio Movie at the Queerties; nominated for Best Horror Film and Best Writing (Vanderbilt and Busick) at the Saturn Awards; Ortega nominated for Best Supporting Performance at the 2023 Fangoria Chainsaw Awards; nominated for Outstanding Film, Wide Theatrical Release at the 2023 GLAAD Media Awards.

Scores

Cast

Crew

Production

Wes Craven said in 2011 he was contracted for a fifth and sixth film if Scream 4 did well, but after years of last-minute rewrites he wanted a finished script before agreeing. Kevin Williamson was contracted for Scream 5. After Scream 4 underperformed, Harvey Weinstein said in 2013 he was begging Bob Weinstein to make one more, and Bob told The Wall Street Journal in 2015 that the MTV series was where the franchise belonged. Craven died that year. Sherak recalled that Project X approached Gary Barber about Scream over lunch soon after he took charge of the library, before the new company even had offices.

After The Weinstein Company collapsed, Spyglass Media Group got the rights in November 2019. Early 2019 reports that Blumhouse was reviving the series turned out to be false. In March 2020 Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett of Radio Silence were hired to direct while they were developing Cocaine Bear. James Vanderbilt and Guy Busick were announced as writers in May 2020, the same month David Arquette was confirmed and Neve Campbell was in talks. Williamson first turned down Vanderbilt's offer to be involved without Craven, then agreed on the condition that the film be dedicated to Craven. The first draft was titled Scream Forever. Williamson announced the title Scream on November 18, 2020. Vanderbilt and Busick watched the first four films together but wrote separate notes before comparing them. Both had independently landed on Woodsboro, Billy's daughter, the returning trio, an opening victim who survives and Dewey's death; they saw the last choice as the event that could bring Sidney back. They wrote the legacy characters before knowing whether the actors would return. Busick admitted that, despite discussing how to remove them if necessary, losing Dewey in particular would have required major rethinking.

Paramount Pictures came on as distributor in June 2020, first aiming for 2021, 25 years after the original, and then set January 14, 2022 because of the pandemic. Courteney Cox confirmed her return on Instagram on July 31, 2020. Melissa Barrera and Jenna Ortega were cast in August 2020 and Jack Quaid in September. That month Campbell, Marley Shelton and Roger L. Jackson were confirmed along with Dylan Minnette, Mason Gooding, Kyle Gallner, Jasmin Savoy Brown, Mikey Madison and Sonia Ben Ammar. Gallner auditioned for Richie and was offered Vince instead. Skeet Ulrich came back as Billy for the first time since 1996. Rian Johnson was supposed to cameo as himself but was busy with Glass Onion, so he is name-dropped as the director of Stab 8. Ulrich recalled being uneasy about playing the teenage Billy again until an email from the directors explained their affection for Craven and the story's reason for bringing him back.

Barrera told Collider she was offered the part without an audition, a first for her. Before the audition she had a Zoom meeting with the directors, James Vanderbilt and producers Chad Villella and William Sherak. When she described a scary movie from her childhood about a tooth fairy creature coming through windows, they knew right away it was Darkness Falls. The next day her team called to say she had the part. Mason Gooding told interviewers he had written a six-page paper at NYU arguing that Scream deserved a reboot; when he mentioned it, the directors asked to read it, and after two weeks of silence they offered him Chad. Gooding remembered discovering Chad's added survival beat in a new draft after his Wilmington costume fitting, before filming began; Sherak told him they hoped to bring him back if the film succeeded.

Filming was set for May 2020 in Wilmington, North Carolina and pushed by COVID-19. It started September 23, 2020 under the working title Parkside and wrapped November 17, 2020. Tara’s opening attack was filmed during the first three days, with Roger L. Jackson performing the phone calls live. Ulrich recalled that his Billy scenes were saved for the end of the shoot, when much of the cast was wrapping. After the art department gave him a mock-up poster, Ulrich wrote a note on it and left it behind the dresser holding his hotel television because he could not travel with it safely. Campbell said the COVID restrictions kept her away from the shared monitors at video village and in a separate room between takes, cutting her off from the creative conversations she usually enjoyed. Campbell recalled that during her first scene, the directors became so absorbed in watching a Scream scene that they forgot to call cut. The production got $7 million in rebates from the North Carolina Film Office. To stop leaks, several versions of the script were written and extra scenes were filmed. The studio got nervous about killing Dewey and asked for an alternate version where he lives.

Michel Aller cut the film, and Patrick Lussier, editor of the earlier films, gave notes on an early cut. Brian Tyler was confirmed as composer on May 12, 2021. Bettinelli-Olpin announced post-production was finished on July 7, 2021. The first trailer came out October 12, 2021, and the screenplay was published January 20, 2022, per the Scream Wiki. Williamson remembered receiving a preview link on a Friday and watching the next morning, unaware that the directors were anxiously waiting for his response. He praised the finished film and found Dewey's death moving.

The first film made without Wes Craven, and dedicated to him, the closing card reads "For Wes". To prepare, Radio Silence repeatedly watched Craven’s commentaries on the earlier films and read his interviews. Shot in Wilmington, North Carolina under the working title "Parkside". Radio Silence got the job off the back of Ready or Not. It became the first film to knock Spider-Man: No Way Home off the top of the North American box office, ending that film's four-week run. Cinematographer Brett Jutkiewicz looked to the original film's ability to create tension without constant darkness. Judy and Wes's bright daytime sequence used that contrast and repeated false alarms to build anticipation.

September 23 to November 17, 2020, in Wilmington, North Carolina, under the working title "Parkside." The shoot had been pushed from May 2020 by COVID-19 protocols. The production received a $7 million rebate from the North Carolina Film Office. Named locations: Williston Middle School at 401 South 10th Street; the Wilmington Convention Center at 10 Convention Center Drive, converted into the hospital; Cardinal Lanes Shipyard at 3907 Shipyard Boulevard; the International Longshoremen's Union Hall at 1305 South 5th Avenue, doubling as the Woodsboro Sheriff's Department; a residential house at 1201 Country Club Road; Reggie's 42nd Street Tavern at 1415 South 42nd Street; 10th Street between Ann and Castle; the Wilmington Riverwalk. Interiors (including the hospital, the trailer park and a full replica of Stu Macher's house) were built at EUE/Screen Gems Studios, 1223 North 23rd Street.

Kevin Williamson initially declined involvement and agreed only on the condition that the film be dedicated to Wes Craven. Radio Silence were hired in March 2020. Campbell was reported in talks in May 2020, the same month Arquette was confirmed and Vanderbilt and Busick were announced. Paramount came aboard as distributor in June 2020, when Cox's and Campbell's returns were still unresolved; Cox confirmed hers on Instagram on July 31, 2020. Barrera and Ortega were cast in undisclosed roles in August 2020; Quaid joined in September, alongside confirmations for Campbell, Shelton and Roger L. Jackson, and the casting of Minnette, Gooding, Gallner, Savoy Brown, Madison and Ben Ammar. Melissa Barrera was offered the part outright with no audition after a Zoom meeting. "They just offered you the part. You don't have to audition anymore. That was the first time that ever happened in my life." The turning point in that meeting was her mentioning that Darkness Falls had traumatized her as a child, only to learn Vanderbilt wrote it and Sherak produced it. She later did a chemistry read with Ortega, which she considers her real audition. Rian Johnson was meant to cameo but Glass Onion prevented it; he is name-dropped instead as the director of Stab 8. Delia tested Madison with a Billy Loomis scene without telling her Amber was the killer. Quaid submitted a self-tape of Mickey's Scream 2 monologue, which made him suspect that Richie might be the villain. Vanderbilt also called The Boys showrunner Eric Kripke to ask about Quaid's ability to play beyond his familiar comic and sympathetic roles.

All in and around Wilmington, North Carolina.

LocationAddress · Scene

Tara Carpenter's house1201 Country Club Road, Wilmington, NC (built 1939) · Opening attack on Tara

"Woodsboro High School"Williston Middle School, 401 South 10th Street, Wilmington, NC · School exteriors

Cardinal Lanes Shipyard3907 Shipyard Boulevard, Wilmington, NC · Bowling alley / title sequence

Woodsboro Sheriff's DepartmentInternational Longshoremen's Union Hall, 1305 South 5th Avenue, Wilmington, NC · Police station. Across the street from the building used as Mick's Bar in Halloween Kills

Reggie's 42nd Street Tavern1415 South 42nd Street, Wilmington, NC · Bar / rock club, Vince's death nearby

Wilmington Convention Center10 Convention Center Drive, Wilmington, NC · Hospital

EUE/Screen Gems Studios1223 North 23rd Street, Wilmington, NC · Hospital interiors, the trailer park, and a full replica of Stu Macher's house

Meeks-Martin house1823 South Live Oak Parkway, Wilmington, NC (built 1954) · Chad and Mindy's home

Hicks house1801 Chestnut Street, Wilmington, NC (built 1903) · Judy and Wes Hicks' home

10th Street between Ann and CastleWilmington, NC · Street work

Wilmington Riverwalk / Market Street areaWilmington, NC · Exteriors

Important: the original Tomales house was not used. Stu's house is a purpose-built replica on a Screen Gems stage.

In-universe director: Rian Johnson, referred to in dialogue as "the Knives Out guy." Producers listed as Ram Bergman and Kathleen Kennedy. (Scream Wiki)

A "requel"a legacy-sequel reboot, dropping the number from the title.

Retells the 2011 Woodsboro murders with heavy creative license and no Sidney Prescott.

Redesigned Ghostface: new mask and robe, and a flamethrowerdismissed by in-universe fans as a "Purge-style Ghostface." Matthew Lillard provides the voice.

In-universe reception: violently divisive. 4chan and Reddit backlash, accusations of "pissing on their childhoods," the fandom labeled toxic. This backlash is Richie Kirsch and Amber Freeman's motive: they commit real murders to generate source material for a "proper" Stab 8.

The film also displays an accurate Stab cast list naming Tori Spelling, Luke Wilson and Heather Graham.

Stab 5's time travel is name-checked again; Stab 7 likewise.

Matarazzo softened Martha's reunion with Dewey during filming. The scripted line said he looked terrible; she instead ended it after “Dewey, you look…”, letting the unfinished thought carry the moment. Radio Silence kept the variation. Arquette also asked the filmmakers to reduce the emphasis on Dewey’s drinking so his familiar resilience would still come through. Jasmin Savoy Brown asked for Mindy’s kiss with her girlfriend at the memorial party to appear on screen instead of only being mentioned in dialogue. The directors agreed. Williamson asked the new writers to let Sidney be thriving rather than defined only by trauma; they developed her marriage and children as part of that approach.

Quaid looked to Allison Williams’s performance in Get Out for a character whose betrayal feels both surprising and inevitable. Quaid gave the editors innocent, suspicious and middle-ground versions of Richie's behavior. He and the directors also planned a physical reversal: Richie holds Sam's face when kissing her, and she takes hold of his head when she kills him. Campbell thought the final reveal speech ran too long; Radio Silence agreed and cut it roughly in half. For research, Quaid created a Reddit account called Stabhead and explored hostile fan videos on YouTube, trying to understand Richie's obsessive relationship with the franchise. He rewatched the earlier Scream films, sought out the horror titles they referenced and watched The Strangers on Radio Silence's recommendation. Quaid also assembled a character playlist and used his own ideas about Richie's feelings for Sam as acting tools, while noting that not all of that imagined psychology was apparent on screen.

Filming locations

• 1201 Country Club Road, Wilmington, North Carolina: The Carpenter house and Tara's opening attack
• Cardinal Lanes Shipyard, 3907 Shipyard Boulevard, Wilmington: The bowling alley where Sam and Richie work in Modesto
• Williston Middle School, 401 South 10th Street, Wilmington: Woodsboro High School
• 115 South Front Street, Wilmington: Woodsboro's main street
• 10th Street between Ann and Castle Streets, Wilmington: Street scenes
• South 42nd Street, Wilmington (Reggie's bar, 1414 South 42nd Street per Reel to Real Filming Locations): The bar the group is thrown out of
• 1302 South 5th Avenue, Wilmington: Where Vince is killed
• Castle Street and 5th Avenue, Wilmington: Judy's U-turn as she races home
• 1823 South Live Oak Parkway, Wilmington: The Meeks-Martin house
• 1801 Chestnut Street, Wilmington: The Hicks house
• Wilmington Convention Center, 10 Convention Center Drive: Woodsboro Hospital, and Sidney's jogging scene
• EUE/Screen Gems Studios, 1223 North 23rd Street, Wilmington: A soundstage replica of Stu Macher's house for Amber's house

Effects and makeup

Rick Pour headed the makeup department and is credited with makeup effects. William Purcell coordinated special effects, and Anthony Cecere and John Copeman were stunt coordinators. For coverage of Sam repeatedly stabbing Richie, Barrera drove the knife into a sponge while Quaid watched from the staircase.

Skeet Ulrich shot all of his Billy Loomis scenes in one day with Melissa Barrera in front of a green screen.

Props and costumes

Emily Gunshor designed the costumes.

Stu Macher's house was not filmed at the real house in Tomales, California. The crew built a replica on a Screen Gems soundstage in Wilmington. The real house is at 3871 Tomales Petaluma Road.

Jamie Kennedy gave the production unreleased photos of himself as a young man for the Randy Meeks shrine in the Meeks-Martin living room.

The in-universe Stab 8 has a chrome-masked Ghostface with a flamethrower, voiced by Matthew Lillard. Brian Tyler's score has a cue titled Chromeface.

Fun World sold a Scream 25th Anniversary Ghost Face mask with an attached shimmer hood and cowl.

The current EU-stamped production mask. Fun World released the 25th Anniversary Movie Mask alongside the film, with an attached shimmer hood and cowl.

Chad Keith worked with the earlier films' designer, Bruce Alan Miller, to match the Macher house down to its stair rails, stained glass and hand-painted kitchen tiles. The team allowed some colors and carpets to change, treating the house as a home that had been repaired since the 1996 murders.

The killers

Deaths

Brian Tyler composed the score, the first Scream film not scored by Marco Beltrami. Tyler had worked with the directors on Ready or Not. He said he wanted to honor the earlier scores while moving into new territory. Beltrami's themes, including Sidney's Lament and Dewey's Theme, are referenced in the film.

Scream (Music from the Motion Picture), Varèse Sarabande, January 7, 2022, on digital, CD and black vinyl; 24 tracks, 70:19, from New Horizons to Ghostface. The cue Into A New World debuted on Deadline before release. A clear red smoke vinyl pressing followed June 10, 2022. Varèse released the box set of Beltrami's four earlier scores the same day as the original album.

No song album was released. Songs in the film: "True Love" by Durand Jones and The Indications; "Just Us" by DJ Khaled and SZA; "The American Scream" by Alkaline Trio; "Turn to Hate" by Orville Peck; "Red Right Hand" by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds; "Pressure" by Kamaiyah; "Guilty Conscience" by 070 Shake; "Aww Shit!" by Tha Alkaholiks; "Fall In Love" by Caroline Kingsbury; "Take Me Where Your Heart Is" by Q; "High Priestess" by Santigold; "Fall Out of Love" by Salem and Carlie Hanson; "I Don't Want to Talk" by Wallows.

"Red Right Hand" plays on the radio of Vince's car just before he is killed.

"I Don't Want to Talk" is by Wallows, the band of Dylan Minnette, who plays Wes.

Reviews of the score were split. Filmtracks called it proficient but unexceptional; Bloody Disgusting and Fangoria were more positive.

Tyler varied when the score warned of danger and when it stayed calm. He sometimes chose the musical approach before watching a scene so the cues would not settle into a pattern that gave every scare away.

• Brian Tyler's score album was released January 7, 2022.

Home Media

• Digital, US, March 1, 2022.
• 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray and DVD, US, April 5, 2022, from Paramount Home Entertainment. Features: filmmaker commentary; New Blood (7:33); Bloodlines (8:33), with Campbell, Cox and Arquette; In the Shadow of the Master (7:22), a tribute to Wes Craven; deleted scenes (2:57). The 4K disc also carries a Scream (1996) 4K trailer (1:31).
• The 4K disc, per Why So Blu: native 4K HEVC at 2.39:1 on a BD-66, and an English 7.1 DTS-HD Master Audio track.
• The Numbers estimates US home video sales at $5,148,593 ($2,125,232 DVD, $3,023,361 Blu-ray).
• Two-movie digital collection with Scream VI, April 25, 2023.
• Six-disc DVD box set of the first six Scream films sold at Amazon, Walmart and Best Buy in 2023.

• Fun World Scream 25th Anniversary Ghost Face collectors edition mask with attached shimmer hood and cowl, plus a limited silver chrome edition.
• Scream (Music from the Motion Picture) score by Brian Tyler on CD and black vinyl, Varèse Sarabande, January 7, 2022; clear red smoke vinyl, June 10, 2022.
• Scream original soundtracks box set of Marco Beltrami's four earlier scores, Varèse Sarabande, January 7, 2022, released to coincide with the new film.

Where to watch

Trailers and videos

Scream, Official Trailer

Paramount Pictures

The main trailer from Paramount's own channel.

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Final Trailer

Paramount Pictures

The last trailer released before the film opened.

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Official Trailer

UIP Movies Indonesia

The same official trailer from Paramount's international distributor.

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Find 30

Paramount Pictures

A thirty second television commercial.

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Full Circle Trailer

The Scream VAULT

The Full Circle promotional trailer.

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Return To Woodsboro Featurette

The Scream VAULT

A featurette about the story coming back to Woodsboro.

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Next Generation TV Spot

The Scream VAULT

A television commercial built around the new younger cast.

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Who's Next TV Spot

The Scream VAULT

A television commercial asking who the next victim will be.

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The Game TV Spot

The Scream VAULT

A television commercial built around the killer's phone game.

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Alarmed TV Spot

The Scream VAULT

A short television commercial.

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Reviews TV Spot

The Scream VAULT

A television commercial quoting the reviews.

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Meet The New Blood

Paramount Pictures

A featurette introducing the new cast.

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New Cast Featurette

Paramount Pictures UK

A cast featurette made for the home release.

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Legacy Rules

Paramount Pictures Australia

A short commercial built around the returning legacy characters.

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Ghost Face is Back

Rotten Tomatoes Trailers

A featurette on the return of the character.

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Making Of, behind the scenes and interviews

STREAM WARS

A long compilation of on set footage and cast interviews.

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Deleted Scenes

Cinevizual

SPOILERS

The scenes that were cut, taken off the Blu-ray extras.

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Cast Interviews

Comicbook.com

Junket interviews with the returning cast and the new one.

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Now Streaming

Paramount Plus

A short streaming promotion for the film.

Gallery

Film Stills

Press & Promo

Behind the Scenes