Collection
Scream
Woodsboro, Ghostface and the rules.
Which order? Release order.
The films, in release order
- 1
Scream 1996Wes Craven makes Kevin Williamson’s knowing slasher funny without letting the danger become a joke. The cast earns our concern, though the script occasionally delays the fright while it explains how horror works.Fi1m 86 - 2
Scream 2 1997Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson take the mask to college and make a sequel that earns its jokes about sequels. The set-pieces are as good as anything in the first film; the ending explains itself at length and is the weaker for it.Fi1m 74 - 3
Scream 3 2000Wes Craven moves the murders to a Hollywood backlot and finds a good joke, mostly in Parker Posey. But Ehren Kruger’s script knows the rules of a trilogy better than it knows how to frighten anyone, and the phone calls have lost their sting.Fi1m 52 - 4
Scream 4 2011Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson bring the knife back to Woodsboro with the jokes intact and the scares mostly missing. The opening and the last twenty minutes are the sharpest the series has been since the first film; the hour between them is deputies sitting in cars.Fi1m 60 - 5
Scream 2022The fifth *Scream* is a bloody, well-built slasher with a fine opening and a David Arquette we did not expect, wrapped in so much talk about sequels that it forgets to be frightening. Worth it for the kills, if you can sit through the seminar.Fi1m 66 - 6
Scream VI 2023The sixth *Scream* takes the killer to New York and gives him a shotgun, and two of its set pieces are the series’ best in years. The talk between them is tired, and the mystery it builds towards is its weakest.Fi1m 65 - 7
Scream 7 2026Kevin Williamson directs his own script at last, Neve Campbell is back and on form, and the film around them is the least sharp the series has produced. Competent murders in the dark, suspects you will spot from the sofa. For the faithful, and only just.Fi1m 48
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