At a recent movie screening, I saw someone displaying unparalleled bravery in the audience. I saw someone willing to push back against a tide of indignity that has battered me for too long. I saw someone wearing a “Scream 3 Defender” shirt.
Yeah, I didn’t think they made those either, but here we are.
I mean, there are only like 8 of us out there, so you can’t blame me for being surprised. For the longest time, I’ve had to sit through people going on tirades about how terrible Scream 3 is. How it’s the worst of the franchise, how it ruined the formula, how it retroactively ruins the other films because of its plot twist. But Scream 3 is not a bad film. It’s not even a bad Scream movie. Because as Randy Meeks puts it in his posthumous survival rules tape for Sidney, Dewey, and Gale, Scream 3 is a rare closer to a horror trilogy…that just happened to keep going with films 4, 5, & 6. It was always intended to be the last Scream, and it does its job perfectly in that context.
Spoilers for Scream 3 and most of the other Scream films start here.
Going Beyond Woodsboro and Making It Count
The title might be a bit inflammatory, yes, but it is specifically worded to point out that Scream 3 is fun, not an expertly made film like the first.
I’m not here to argue over the things in the film that don’t make sense; I don’t think that the super high-tech voice changer isn’t dumb (it is), and I don’t think that the gas explosion kill makes any sense on a planning or physics level (it doesn’t). I am NOT here for Gale’s terrible bangs discourse. Scream 3 is far from perfect from a production standpoint, thanks to being subject to plenty of reshoots and 11th hour rewrites, and we can all acknowledge that. Hell, the film does plenty of that with its many in-jokes and references to its own continual script changes, in the light of leaks that were releasing both planted fake and actual material of Scream 3. The production was a hot mess, that in my eyes, pulled off the slightest of miracles with how well the film turned out.
But what I will argue is that as far as stories go, Scream 3 is the movie that gets best to the essence of the original, and it’s the second most fun in the franchise while doing it. It’s got plenty of messed up dark comedy, it’s got stellar performances, and it’s got the meta-horror commentary we love. It swings for the fences with its bolder ideas, like having a cast of actors portraying characters we’ve seen before as the new retinue of victims, including fan favorite Jennifer Jolie (played by Parker Posie), who accompanies Gale Weathers while trying to act like Gale Weathers. Rest in peace Jennifer, you were the best of us, you were the best of all the Scream side characters.
The cast-within-a-cast brilliance and the humor is a small byproduct of the film perfectly utilizing the Hollywood location; Craven’s directing makes for some joyride sequences. From set pieces like being stalked in a wardrobe room filled with Ghostface costumes, to being chased through a recreation of Sidney’s own house on a soundstage, going beyond Woodsboro really felt like it had more purpose than the environmental rehash that Windsor College ended up feeling like in 2.
Even the finale inside Milton’s old money mansion in the hills is the perfect level of camp while still feeling like uncharted territory. And while some deride it as closer to Scooby Doo than Scream, that’s…the whole point. The film is supposed to be a fun send-off for these characters, including stuff like getting trapped in hidden passageways and secret rooms.
And what really makes it the perfect endpoint for the trilogy is the send-off it gives Sidney.
But First, A Roman Bridger Recap
Scream 3 is a movie about a final girl’s last struggle and triumph, not only against individual violent, delusional men, but the culture that makes them. A struggle that has been going on since the first film, and 3 shows the most how Sidney has grown as a character.
She’s a women’s crisis counselor who works anonymously from an isolated home, with only Dewey aware of her location. She’s still reeling from the last film, having lost most of her friends along the way. But eventually, Ghostface rearing his ugly head forces her to confront her fraught relationship with her mother, and put her fears down one last time. Her arc culminates in one of the best final girl confrontations in all of horror history: Sidney Prescott vs Roman Bridger.
That second name caused a lot of groans and eye-rolls amongst fans reading this, I know, but hear me out. Because Roman Bridger is not just a personal favorite Ghostface of mine, he might just be the best Ghostface after Billy Loomis and Stu Macher for what he becomes a symbol of.
Played by the wonderfully talented Scott Foley, Roman is unduly hated for his miraculous and continuity-breaking kill streak (again, not here to talk editing). He is the only canonically solo slasher in the franchise pulling off some impossible feats, and his origins are even more controversial: Roman is the half-brother of Sidney by way of Maureen Prescott, with the other half of his parentage being one of the predatory Hollywood producers John Milton helped in assaulting Maureen.
Eventually finding his mother as an adult after being put up for adoption, Maureen refused to reconnect with Roman since he was too painful a memory of the worst time in her life. Enraged, he began stalking Maureen and filming the affairs she was having around town, eventually catching her with Hank Loomis. Showing Billy the footage as an act of vengeance and spurring him to frame Cotton Weary, the teenager’s plans to kill her were set into motion.
This would eventually lead to the creation of Ghostface, a moniker Roman would claim years later when he tried to lure out Sidney and end the Prescott bloodline for good. Roman is a nasty, entitled, chauvinistic piece of work who really takes the cake as far as Ghostface’s go, and his deluded efforts are rewarded with the beatdown of the century.
Scream 3’s Final Confrontation Is The Crescendo Sidney’s Story Was Building To
When they finally meet in the theatre room of Milton’s mansion at the film’s climax, Roman Bridger is revealed for what he really is: the perfect embodiment of the misogyny and sexual violence that has been following Sidney Prescott her entire life. While there is an intangible specter of Maureen Prescott haunting Sidney’s dreams in this film, the physical representation of that suffering ends up right in front of her. Standing across the room from her is the incarnation of all the misery, bullying, and judgment from Woodsboro and the world at large, placing blame and hatred on innocent women in the name of defending abusers.
From her classmates in the school bathrooms deriding her mother, to Nancy Loomis blaming Maureen for Billy’s actions, to Billy himself, Sidney gets to meet a neatly packaged representative for the culture of misogyny that made her flee into isolation in the first place. Roman Bridger becomes the human target for Sidney to unleash three films of pure rage on, and in their fight, it is cathartic glory. The dialogue they have before they get into it always makes me grin, because we get to watch Sidney finally chew him apart, and by extension demolish every other Ghostface’s terrible motivations.
It is by far the most brutal of the confrontations that we get until the Radio Silence films when they start throwing bricks and stabbing people 40 times a piece (not that I’m complaining, love me some bloody Radio Silence fare). It’s a pure knock-down, drag-out fight to the death that lets Sidney put her past behind her by physically beating the hell out of a human representation of evil. And it is downright fun.
When Sidney sinks that ice pick into Roman’s heart, it might not be what does him in finally (thanks for the headshot, Dewey), but it is what puts to rest the ghost of hatred that’s lingered all these years. She holds his hand as he dies, which can be read in a dozen different ways, but to me, it always felt straightforward: she had finally put that vigilance, that feeling of anxiety and shame and fear that sent her into hiding to rest, and was giving it a bloodstained send-off. A proverbial goodbye to Ghostface and his reign of terror, on behalf of the audience.
You know, at least until Scream 4 came along.
The Thematic Bow That Is The Roman Reveal
Now, many people hate that Scream 3 “retcons” Billy Loomis and Stu Macher’s motivations as being puppeteered by Roman. Except for a.) the fact that Roman literally states he never knew they were going to do the Ghostface killings, and b.) he makes their actions more realistic.
Roman spurring Billy to become a killer is in and of itself a pretty good commentary on how terrible men doing heinous things create more terrible men who do even worse. John Milton made Roman, even if we believe he never laid a finger on Maureen; he was an awful man who victim blamed and used his clout to avoid consequences. This made Roman, who eventually became a victim, blame his own mother in the same way his “father” did. Then that kid found Billy Loomis, and, you’re smart you can do the math on how that turned out.
The point is, that the cycle of misogyny and violence is propagated from father to son, from friend to friend, and the first three Scream movies were always a pretty prescient commentary on that idea that we now see as commonplace. Roman’s demise and Sydney’s victory is a neat bow that ties up the cycle of violence that followed Sidney and ends with her getting a well-deserved walk off into the sunset. And that walk is scored with triumphant music and bright, warm light that left Sidney at the peak of her victories.
Scream 3 undoubtedly deserves more credit. And do I really think everyone who dislikes it is simply anti-fun? Of course not, there are plenty of legitimate reasons you might find it hard to watch this film. But if it’s been a while since you’ve seen it, and you want to watch it as the end to Sidney’s story, it is more than worth a second chance. The next time you plan on skipping straight to 4 on a marathon watch through to see Emma Roberts dive bomb through a coffee table, think to yourself: do I want to skip the coolest fight Sidney Prescott’s ever been in and miss her one true happy ending?
The answer might just be no. Happy watching, horror fans!