The Ultimate Ranking of the "Scream" Franchise

By: Christopher James

What is the best Scream movie? Who is the best Ghostface? What movie has the best opening? Read to find out!

The Scream franchise isn’t just a top-notch series of slasher films. It’s a chronicle of the changing tropes within the horror genre. Over 26 years, the five Scream films have expertly scared the pants off audiences, while also commenting on sequel, trilogy and reboot culture. The fifth film, confusingly or pointedly just titled Scream, opens this week in theaters. Glenn Dunks already gave us his full review. Like him, I’m also a huge fan of the series and excitedly binged the franchise again this week with friends.

With every new film, I fell more and more in love with the saga of scrupulous reporter Gail Weathers (Courtney Cox), the dopey yet charming Dewey Riley (David Arquette) and the ultimate “final girl” at the center of it all, Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell). In the background of all the movies is the "Stab" franchise-within-a-franchise, a slasher series that's always about the previous film and continues to mythologize Sidney Prescott and the rest of the Woodsboro gang. All of the films, do a great job introducing new characters, new kills and new tricks for the shifty, gumby-esque Ghostface.

So what’s the ranking of the five Scream movies? SPOILERS ahead for the first four films (we’ll refrain from spoilers for the 2022 film, but if you want to go in super cold, don’t read yet!).

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Horror Actressing: Ronee Blakley in "A Nightmare on Elm Street"

by Jason Adams

Marge Thompson is such a weirdo. Less than ten years after her Oscar nomination for Robert Altman's classic Nashville the singer turned actress Ronee Blakley was playing the Mom in a slasher flick. Some might disparage that turn of events -- say she was "reduced to" playing the Mom in a slasher flick. I am not one of those people. Especially when you see the gloriously strange performance that Blakley turned in. There's nothing unmemorable about the final girl Nancy Thompson's momma -- she'll haunt your dreams!

A Nightmare on Elm Street is about the sins of the parents being visited, rather traumatically, upon their children, a symbiotic theme that Craven would come to visit time and again with his horror films...

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Beauty vs Beast: Cillian Time

Howdy and Happy Monday, folks, Jason from MNPP here with your "Beauty vs Beast" for the week - this time around we're wishing the great and still somehow under-rated Cillian Murphy a happy 40th birthday! He hits the milestone on Wednesday, and we couldn't be happier to watch him age - his smooth-skinned preternatural prettiness was kind of too much to look at once upon a time. Time has made him seem more human, less alien and terrifying, which on the one hand is a loss, but I think that he's a great enough actor that it's one he can overcome with ease.

Anyway in his honor we're stepping back to a role that, contrary to everything I just said, showed him at his most human and his most terrifying all at once, with Wes Craven's terrifically entertaining 2005 thriller Red Eye. Cillian Murphy plays Jackson Rippner (yes really!), the viscious cat to Rachel McAdams' determined little mouse Lisa, and they Tom-n-Jerry each other all over an airplane. S'good times!

PREVIOUSLY We put on our best brave face to face off the mother-daughter team of Terms of Endearment, and in the end it was "Big Momma" MacLaine who stuck her head through the sunroof to victory, taking about 64% of the vote. Said Suzanne:

"Aurora is winning because Shirley MacLaine is one of the great screen actresses but somehow doesn't seem to get enough credit. Also because I voted for her on each of my electronic devices."

Goodbye to the Master of Horror, Wes Craven

Glenn Dunks, our resident "Scream" fanatic says goodbye to Wes Craven...

It’s not easy writing about the passing of Wes Craven. The director who was synonymous with the horror genre, and in particular the slasher franchises A Nightmare on Elm Street and Scream, died on Sunday at age 76 from brain cancer after having battled ill health for several years and the news hit like a stab to the chest. His three-year illness likely explains why he hadn’t directed a film since 2011’s Scream 4, but it hadn’t stopped him from working altogether. He was completing a horror comic with Steve Niles called Coming of Rage, was developing a remake of his 1991 film The People Under the Stairs, and continued to executive produce MTV’s long-form TV adaptation of Scream.

There are few older celebrities whose death could hit as hard as Craven. He wasn’t just a great filmmaker, or a filmmaker with a lot of films that people liked. No, Wes Craven was quite literally a filmmaker that changed lives. A lot of ‘em – and that’s not an exaggeration. It’s genuinely hard to make even one, let alone two, generation-defining movies and it’s been wonderful to hear so many people, friends and strangers alike, share their stories on social media of how A Nightmare on Elm Street was the first horror film they ever saw and how it turned them into scare-seeking horror fiends. Or how Scream made them want to write about film. I’m one of those people, and there are a few extra Film Experience writers who share the same sentiments, but the numbers I've seen cite that seemingly inocuous 1996 slasher as a life inspiration has been surprising and actually comforting.

So when I went to write about his passing, I actually couldn’t. Not immediately, anyway. How do you describe the man who made the movies that defined our life? I hope he knew the effect his films had on people beyond simply scaring them.

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