Lackey the Listicle Ranks: Ghostface Killers Across the SCREAM Franchise
“Afterthoughts” is a new Fear of God blog series featuring co-hosts and guests further unpacking thoughts, themes, and ideas that keep them up at night from the conversations and content covered on the show. This entry is by the man himself, Lackey the Listicle, the occasionally listless list-making lackey, and is a follow-up to this past week’s episode featuring Scream 4. Enjoy, then, the latest entry in this new chapter of The Fear of God…
Hi, there… Me again. Lackey the Listicle. Here to listlessly list the generally loquacious, often lucrepitous, losers and laggards loping about the lethargic town of Woodsboro, predominant site of the Scream franchise.
It probably goes without saying, but there are MAJOR SPOILERS for each of the Scream films in this article.
As observed on the main episode for Scream 4, Ghostface is unique among his slasher peers in that he is not a consistent entity which perpetually refuses to die. Rather, he is a mantle that psychos and fanatics adopt in order to disguise and embellish their fiendish schemes. In four franchise installments (thus far), we’ve had seven killers don the cloak and mask. Some of them were pure manic genius, others were little more than a footnote for the plot twist.
So here, accounting for their character strength, their motivation to kill, and their impact upon the franchise as a whole, is the definitive ranking from filler to killer of every homicidal maniac to ever take up the dreaded mask of Ghostface…
7. Charlie Walker (Rory Culkin in Scream 4)
Charlie, the tech-geek trivia wunderkind (and diet Randy Meeks) is little more than a glorified prop in his film. His reveal as the killer means much more for how he betrays Kirby (Hayden Panettiere in a scene-stealing performance) than for his position in the broader narrative. He was convinced to wield the knife by his affection for Jill (Emma Roberts), who he suspected would run away with him into the bloody sunset. Sadly – for him – she unceremoniously slices him an exit mere moments after he’s made his triumphant reveal. The film could have done many more interesting things with a “Randy-esque killer” but it wastes him on a cheap plot turn and then quickly disposes of him. Probably for the best.
6. Roman Bridger (Scott Foley in Scream 3)
Roman’s very existence is far-fetched. Even more so his motivations for killing everybody (the long lost brother of Sydney Prescott chooses THIS labyrinthine plan to say hello?). Don’t even get me started on the super silly fake-out death he elaborately stages so that – what – at least one random person could find him and be thrown off of the trail for maybe fifteen minutes until he finally spilled all the beans? It all just reeks of forced plot twisting and shallow surprise justification. Scott Foley is game enough performance-wise, but this one is weak on every conceivable level.
5. Billy Loomis (Skeet Ulrich in Scream)
Creepy from scene one, then playfully diverted and exonerated, only to be ultimately fake-butchered before his big shocker unveiling as the original killer all along. Billy’s pedigree as the inaugural mastermind behind Ghostface deserves a tip of the mask to be sure, but he’s otherwise a fairly uninteresting character. His entire thrust is either revenge, lust, or some version of desperation (either in rage or feigned loneliness). Aside from a somewhat signature mid-90s bad boy look, Billy doesn’t have much to offer of interest on his own. His only narrative merit is that he was so unhinged one year after revenge-killing Sydney’s mom, he decided to go for broke on the daughter too. But hey, look what he started, right?
4. Mickey Altieri (Timothy Olyphant in Scream 2)
Now THIS is how you take a nerd and make them a killer. Mickey can match wits nearly beat-for-beat with Randy Meeks (Jamie Kennedy) and when Olyphant goes full-tilt mayhem towards the climax, it’s electric in its energy. While his plan to find exoneration by “blaming the movies” is ill-conceived at best, watching him taunt Sydney about her boyfriend woes and relish the second spree’s mastermind reveal is one of the franchise’s most gleefully macabre delights.
3. Jill Roberts (Emma Roberts in Scream 4)
One of the best things the fourth entry does for us after it reveals the killer to be Sydney’s cousin Jill, is spend a bonkers sequence with her as she systematically stages her own victimhood. HeR motivations to kill and destroy are haunting and a bit too believable at times, but then seeing her absolutely destroy herself in order to convince the cops that she was the sole survivor of the latest Woodsboro massacre. This solo pandemonium is the tour de force of a Ghostface manifesto. The Ghostface façade has always been about theater, with the taunting phone calls and sly stalking, sometimes missing the victim on purpose to heighten the prolonged effect. But here, the mask is off and the curtain is lifted, and the madness which has irrevocably scorched away any remaining threads of humanity is brought front and center in the unbridled fury of someone in need of attention. In some ways, Jill is the purest embodiment of what Ghostface is: a recreation and celebration of an honest-to-God scary movie.
2. Debbie Salt (Laurie Metcalf in Scream 2)
While the case is strong that Jill should outrank Debbie here, there are three very distinct edges (get it) that the mastermind behind Scream 2’s death spree has over the psychotic teen. First, her motive is arguably the purest of any of the Scream killers: mama bear wants revenge on the “tramp” who killed her son. We don’t have to agree with her, but it’s the easiest to understand. Second, Metcalf’s exuberant performance deserves top marks in any horror slasher. She chews on every inch of her character’s demented intentions like a big, juicy steak. And while her presence early in the film may have tipped off the savvier viewers to her larger role (no way Laurie Metcalf was merely a two-scene cameo reporter), her emergence and villain’s monologue are probably my favorite of the whole franchise. Oh… and third, she single-handedly takes out the fan-favorite Randy, which is the hardest hitting and heaviest loss the series ever sees, raising the stakes higher than the films ever go again.
1. Stu Macher (Matthew Lillard in Scream)
It is one of the defining moments of the Scream franchise when Sydney, desperate to escape the revealed killer Billy, runs into Stu and pleads for his help, only for him to raise the voice changer and taunt, “Surpriiiiise, Sydney…” One of the biggest twists of the first film rarely gets enough credit: that the reason the killer could be in so many different places so quickly is that there were TWO killers, each adorning the Ghostface persona. Matthew Lillard’s brilliantly relentless performance is simultaneously gleeful and unnerving, as likely to crack you up as to give you chills. While Billy exudes mostly rage and frustration, Stu is like a child at a playground, planning the sequels and throwing the tantrums and even having at least one full-blown adolescent cry (“My mommy’s gonna be so mad at me…”). He set the precedent that not only could Ghostface be anybody, it could be everybody, which would be a foundational theme to each of the sequels. And while the future installments have their respective highlights, there’s never another performance that matches the zany, boisterous mania that Lillard embodies in Stuart. He’s not just the best psycho in this horror franchise, he’s one of the best in any of them.
