All ‘Scream’ Movies and Series, Ranked

The series was a departure for the franchise as it focused on a different group of teens from the town of Lakewood who become the targets of a masked killer following a viral video scandal. No Ghostface, no Woodboro.

Starring Willa Fitzgerald as the new final girl, Emma Duval, the first season ended with Emma’s half-sister, Piper (Amelia Rose Blaire), as the killer, seeking revenge against Emma and her mom, Maggie (Tracy Middendorf), blaming them for the life she never had. The second season revealed the killer to be Kieran Wilcox (Amadeus Serafini), Piper’s boyfriend, who was pissed at losing his girlfriend and continued the murders for…reasons. These first two seasons were marred by a lack of the original film’s identity, trading its sharp meta commentary and Ghostface mythology for a more conventional teen slasher approach.

As for the third season…well, remember those first two seasons? Never happened.

The third season acted as a series reboot, giving fans their Ghostface back, but at the cost of everything else, as a whole new cast, a new story, and a new continuity created thin character development and predictable twists. The season follows Deion Elliot (RJ Cyler) as his friend group is targeted by Ghostface. In the end, the killer behind the mask was Beth (Giorgia Whigham), a horror-obsessed classmate who wanted to create her own real-life slasher story. Classic Beth.

Wes Craven’s subversive deconstruction of slasher flicks from the first two films took a serious tumble in the third installment, which attempted to apply its cutting satire to the filmmaking business. Often considered the weakest entry in the franchise by the fanbase, the series attempts to embrace campy comedy with a toned-down, less violent horror approach, and the result is an uninspired entry that makes fun of Hollywood rather than horror, and takes the edge off the edgy series.

The fourth chapter of the franchise follows Sidney (Neve Campbell) as she returns to Woodsboro on the anniversary of the original killings, only for a new Ghostface to emerge. As the killer targets a younger group of teens, including Sid’s cousin Jill Roberts (Emma Roberts), Sidney, Gale (Courteney Cox), and Dewey (David Arquette) are pulled back into a familiar cycle of violence. By this point, Scream had begun to morph into the very thing it once mocked, leaning into more conventional horror tropes, though it still offered a sharp commentary on fame, remakes, and a generation raised on viral notoriety.

The entry that got the franchise back on the right, bloody track again. The fifth installment succeeds where Scream 3 and Scream 4 faltered, reinventing the series while honoring its lore. It introduces compelling new leads in sisters Sam and Tara Carpenter (Melissa Barrera and Jenna Ortega), grounds the story in real emotional stakes, and restores Ghostface as a truly dangerous threat. The shocking loss of legacy character Dewey Riley (Arquette) hit longtime fans where it hurt most, proving no one was safe and giving the franchise its teeth back.

Rarely does the sixth entry in a series help a franchise regain its footing, but Scream VI pulls off that magic trick, delivering one of the strongest installments since the original ’90s run. Survivors Sam and Tara Carpenter (Barrera and Ortega), along with twins Chad and Mindy Meeks-Martin (Mason Gooding and Jasmin Savoy Brown), move to New York City for a fresh start after the Woodsboro murders, only to be hunted by a more brutal, relentless Ghostface who uses the anonymity of the city to deadly advantage. Building to a chilling showdown inside a shrine devoted to past killings, the film stands as one of the franchise’s goriest entries, proving Scream hasn’t just endured, it’s evolved.

Following in the footsteps of its predecessor, Scream 2 continues to fuse well-worn horror movie tropes with savvy, self-aware satire, crafting a sequel worthy of its legacy while proving that lightning could, in fact, strike twice. The sequel follows Sidney (Campbell) as she tries to move on at college, only for a new copycat Ghostface killer to start a brutal murder spree, targeting her and the original survivors. Skewering all the cliches that go along with a slash sequel, Scream 2 was widely considered a top-tier horror sequel that successfully expanded on the original’s meta-commentary with suspenseful scenes and self-aware dialogue.

It was the first, and it remains the best. From the shocking opening twist that killed off the film’s biggest name, Drew Barrymore, to the double reveal of two killers, Stu Macher (Matthew Lillard) and Billy Loomis (Skeet Ulrich), the original not only introduced audiences to Sidney Prescott and Ghostface, but also reinvented the slasher genre itself. Director Wes Craven blended familiar horror tropes with razor-sharp meta commentary, creating a film that was both a love letter to the genre and a reinvention of it and, in the process, a cultural phenomenon.