#Ranking the Scream films: Which one is the best?

A Comic Con attendee poses as Ghostface from Scream (Photo by Daniel Zuchnik/Getty Images)

Here’s our ranking of all the Scream films

What’s your favorite scary movie series? For me, it’s Scream. The horror franchise was a massive success when it hit the theaters in Dec. of 1996 and spawned three sequels and an MTV sequel series. It revitalized the horror genre by poking fun at it while also creating a compelling narrative in its own right.

In the original film, Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) is a high-schooler living in the town of Woodsboro, California, and struggling with grief a year after the murder of her mother. When a masked killer deemed Ghostface begins a murder spree on Woodsboro, Sidney quickly becomes the main target. As she tries to stay alive, she must confront her mother’s past and be wary of who to trust.

I’ve never been a fan of horror movies for the simple fact that I don’t enjoy being scared while trying to enjoy a movie. As a result, I hadn’t seen any of the Scream movies until a few weeks ago when a friend suggested that we watch them.

I agreed because I figured that since the original film features comedic actors such as Courtney Cox, Jamie Kennedy, and a pre-Scooby-Doo Matthew Lillard, the series couldn’t be that scary, and I was mostly right.

While the series serves up a healthy dose of scares, there are plenty of comedic moments to be found throughout the films as Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson poke fun at horror movie tropes.

After completing my watch-through, where do I rank each film in the series? Let’s take a look at each installment in the Scream franchise from the worst to the best.

4. Scream 2 (1997)

The Scream franchise’s second installment picks up two years after the events of the first. Sidney and her friend Randy (Jamie Kennedy), now students at Windsor College, are trying to move forward with their lives after surviving the Woodsboro murders.

However, once two of their Windsor College peers are murdered by a copycat Ghostface killer, Sidney must once again confront her past. One of Scream 2‘s biggest themes is that movie sequels are not usually able to surpass the original with rare exceptions such as The Godfather: Part II. Unfortunately, Scream 2 is not one of those exceptions.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a bad film by any means, but while Scream 2 seems to know it’s a sequel, it doesn’t offer any surprises, at least none that it works to pay off. Sure, the body count is bigger, and the deaths are gorier, but I’ve got a problem with a horror whodunit when I can suss out the killers from a mile away. Although Timothy Olyphant gives a great performance, Mickey always seems five seconds away from blowing his cover.

While having Mrs. Loomis (Laurie Metcalf) be Mickey’s accomplice provides a twist that, as Randy puts it, “breaks new ground,” Metcalf, too, sticks out like a sore thumb. When we’re introduced to her, she’s disguised as Debbie Salt, a reporter that spends more time hounding Gale Weathers (Courtney Cox) than doing actual reporting. When she’s finally revealed to be Billy Loomis’s mother, it’s surprising and confusing considering that we’ve had no mention of Mrs. Loomis the entire movie.

As a result, the killer reveals are nowhere near as revealing as the original movie, and so we’re left with only a gorefest, which takes Randy Meeks away from us too soon. Still, Neve Campbell, Courtney Cox, and David Arquette give solid performances and set themselves up as an exciting core group for the rest of the series.