Do you like scary movies? Then you've likely seen the genre-redefining slasher Scream, the Wes Craven 1996 masterpiece that rewrote the script on slasher flicks, literally. Refreshingly self-aware and continuously self-referential, Scream at once both elevated the slasher genre to mainstream popularity while also killing it off altogether.
But from destruction comes rebirth, and a genre was born anew post-1996 to become a superior version of itself. It was a transition that took a couple of decades, but by 2016, what is known as "elevated horror" was dominating the box office, critic's lists, social media, and the zeitgeist in general.
Elevated horror became so popular that the self-aware minds behind the newest Scream installment felt the need to call it out. What is elevated horror? Think Robert Eggers' The VVitch, Jordan Peele's Get Out, The Babadook, and whatever piece of truly terrifying yet relatable art that Ari Aster crafts.
Never miss an opportunity to be "meta," Scream 2022 references the current state of horror respectability and popularity without acknowledging the franchise's role in elevating it to those heights.
Yes, the Scream films are fabulous fun whodunits that dissect the slasher genre apart. But the Scream franchise is also about Sidney Prescott, the murder of her mother, her being betrayed and violated by someone close to her, and how she processes her trauma, overcomes it, and lives with PTSD day-to-day. The films serve as a chronicle of Sidney's experiences with PTSD, and they are her survival story, a testament to her resilience. And it's a story familiar to many who have faced partner abuse and other traumas, giving comfort to many who see their own stories reflected in Sidney's.
Signs of PTSD are clear in Sidney from the beginning of Scream 1996 up through the final scene of 2022's "requel." Going film by film, viewers can track Sidney's initial trauma and grief, how she processes it and works to overcome it, and how she reacts to events that trigger her PTSD, all the while ditching the "victim" label and becoming a survivor, the final girl to end all final girls.
Scream (1996)
Suppose you haven't seen the 26-year-old film, SPOILER ALERT! A knife-wielding killer in a "Ghostface" mask haunts the town of Woodsboro, and Sidney Prescott seems to be the killer's intended target. The trauma of multiple attacks on her life comes one year after Sidney's mother was brutally murdered, and she is still processing her grief from that. Sidney seems to feel very little closure despite a conviction in the case—her grief, trauma, and fear are palpable. Displaying classic signs of trauma and PTSD, she's anxious, skittish, sensitive to touch, light, and sudden movements.
After such a turbulent year, she's also understandably hesitant to move forward in her relationship with her high school boyfriend, Billy Loomis. Yet Billy pokes and prods at her trauma with gaslighting taunts. Billy tells Sid she is overreacting and should get over the brutal murder of her mother, never once considering that the media maelstrom overtaking Woodsboro (the town the story is based in) is "just like déjà vu all over again" for Sidney, who experienced much of the same the year before when her mother died.
For an added metaphoric knife in the back, Billy later admits to murdering Sid's mother after an affair with Billy's father sent his mom packing, and reveals he plans on framing Sid for his murder spree. Billy is the alpha and omega of Sid's trauma; he secretly started it, then as she was healing, he repeatedly ripped off the Band-Aid, poured gasoline all over the wound, and lit a match. This level of violation, betrayal, and abuse from a partner—from the person that should be the most trustworthy, the most supportive—creates a whole new trauma for Sidney, one that she will end up processing and living with for the rest of her onscreen life.
Sid's experience, though heightened for horror movie audiences, rings true for victims of partner abuse in real life. Whether physical, sexual, mental/emotional, or all of the above, partner abuse fosters debilitating trust issues. Conditions that make following through on any relationship difficult and lead to destructive patterns of self-sabotage, a fact that Sidney learns as she moves forward to the next phase of her life: college.
Scream 2
The 1997 sequel picks up with Sidney and her traumas a few years down the road as she does her best to have an everyday college life at Windsor University. She's made friends, found love with an earnest frat pledge named Derek, and is thriving in the university theater scene. On the surface, Sid seems accustomed to things like prank phone calls and press inquiries that could trigger a trauma reaction. But she lowkey lives with PTSD every moment of her life.
Even as she presents a calm exterior, she's also always on guard, tense, standing at attention, prepared for an attack at any moment. The posturing and pretending, as well as the hypervigilance, are all too familiar to survivors of trauma who live with PTSD. She's teetering on edge, and it is, of course, at this moment that a ghost(face) from Sidney's past pops back up to haunt her.
Spurred on by the release of Stab, a film about the Woodsboro murders, a new Ghostface killer arrives in Windsor, and that arrival takes its toll on Sid's new relationship. Recent events bring Sid's old trauma back to life, causing her to worry that she can't trust her new boyfriend as it's entirely possible that he could be the one trying to destroy her now, just like Billy before. This mistrust is no stranger to actual survivors of trauma and abuse. Survivors find it difficult to trust the intentions of a new person because it feels like, at any moment, that person will violate their trust and betray and harm them.
While that mistrust is brewing, an incongruous line of thinking is also simmering within Sidney. Thanks to Billy's gaslighting, Sid devalues her self-worth, and she's convinced herself that she's not good enough for Derek, although she also suspects he is a mass murderer. "I'm damaged goods, stay away from me," she tells him. This, too, is a siren song familiar to survivors of abuse.
Abusers are skillful at convincing others that they deserve the abuse they are receiving, such that when others are kind and respectful, it feels entirely foreign to the person who was abused. They think they are not worthy of that kindness and respect and push those people away, sabotaging themselves and what could have possibly been a supportive relationship. And that's precisely what Sid does.
After she pushes Derek away, the killer is revealed, and it's not Derek, though the killer attempts to convince Sid that Derek is in on it with him. Derek is in danger, and Sid can save him if she believes he is innocent. She dawdles in her decision − while she is frozen in inaction, Derek is killed and his innocence made known. For Sidney, Derek's death confirms the self-doubt created by Billy's gaslighting, and she fully embraces the idea that she is damaged goods and would taint any good person she gets involved with and drag them to their destruction. Again, that line of thinking is familiar to trauma victims, causing survivors to sabotage relationships and build walls that make themselves emotionally, if not physically, impenetrable.
Scream 3
And put up walls, Sidney does! The third film in the "trilogy" finds Sid a few years older and miles away from Woodsboro and Windsor. She lives alone in an isolated wooded area behind fences, gates, and multiple alarms with an adorable golden retriever guard dog. She works from home as a counselor for an abused woman's hotline. Working under the fake name of Laura, Sid is guarded, alert, on edge, but she is surviving, taking comfort in isolation and anonymity. That is until, once again, Ghostface reenters her life and begins murdering people associated with the newest film in the Stab series.
Sid travels to LA to help Gale and Dewey solve the latest mystery, and they are joined by LAPD Detective Kincaid, who indicates interest in Sidney. Though Sidney appears to reciprocate, she keeps him about 27 arms' lengths away. For Sidney, opening herself up to another round of violation, betrayal, and pain might not be something she could recover from for a third time. For her, metaphoric and literal demons lurk around every corner, and Detective Kincaid could be one of them.
Luckily for Sid, the dreamy detective is not the killer, and the film ends with Sidney letting Gale, Dewey, and Kincaid into her woodsy fortress. This gesture implies that Sidney breaks down some walls and enables people who care about her into her world. Still, some of the fear is still there: Sid's backdoor pops open unexpectedly, and she tenses up a bit, but then just as quickly, she softens, indicating that for Sidney, those demons are no longer lurking behind every corner, though they may not be gone entirely.
Sidenote: Scream 3 takes place behind the scenes of the movie industry and is a film about powerful studio execs luring an inexperienced young woman into institutionalized sexual abuse. These experiences can cause victims-turned-survivors to have much of the same emotional trauma and PTSD as Sidney. This is significant because the film is produced by Harvey Weinstein, a powerful studio exec who did precisely that to many women, including Scream star Rose McGowan. It is unclear whether this theme was chosen coincidentally or purposely as a dog whistle to call attention to Weinstein's abuse (before it was made public).
Scream 4
The fourth installment finds Sidney in Woodsboro for the first time since the original murders. With more than a decade of distance between her, the murders, and her mother's death, it's clear that Sid feels some amount of closure. She's had enough time and space to process some of her trauma, such that, she's been able to distill her experiences into a memoir that discusses her life as a trauma survivor and how she copes with PTSD.
Sid has always been formidable, but she displays an amount of emotional and spiritual growth not seen before in this installment. With a new resilience, Sidney embarks on a press tour to promote her book, and it's clear that Sidney no longer wants to be burdened by the "victim" label.
But her PR person and the media still want to impose victimology onto her narrative. As Sid fights the world to retake power over her narrative, a new round of Ghostface killings terrorizes Woodsboro. As the usual Scooby gang works to solve the whodunit, Sid makes it clear she's not interested in pity or sympathy but only living a life that's entirely on her terms, free from scrutiny and societal expectations. This contrasts with the person's motives revealed to be the killer, Sidney's teenage cousin, who sought to relive the Woodsboro tragedy as a mechanism to dethrone Sidney as the "final girl" to achieve notoriety, social media attention, and sympathy.
With a bit of help from old pals Gale and Dewey, Sidney triumphs over another would-be abuser who wished to dig the knife into her trauma (so to speak) to exploit her pain and benefit from it. Having defeated a new Ghostface, taken control of her narrative, and conquered some of the demons that fueled her PTSD, Sid comes out the other side of the showdown stronger than we've ever seen her.
Scream 2022, the "requel"
Don't call it a comeback. Or a strict sequel per se. But maybe call it a requel? The fifth installment is 10 years after the fourth and 25 years after the beginning. With original cast members now in their 40's and 50's, the requel introduces a whole new cast of teens while Sid, Gale, and Dewey take more peripheral roles. Unsurprisingly, Ghostface is back, and he's targeting victims that have connections to the original Woodsboro murders.
The reprisal serves to bring Sid out of seclusion where she's been happily coupled and raising daughters. Instead of being the main target this time, Sid's character is something like a guiding light for newbie Sam, and the storyline of the film acts as a torch-passing ceremony to Sam, who will likely be the focus of future films. Sid is as fierce and resilient as we've ever seen her in this leadership role. She's ready to take on the new Ghostface and all her old demons, all while helping young Sam face up to nightmares of her own.
Without spoiling the new film, it's essential to acknowledge that Sam is experiencing some trauma of her own, and her trauma is of the inherited/intergenerational variety. For children who grow up in the aftermath of trauma, the emotions that traumatic events carry with them are palpable, even though children may not cognitively understand events as they unfold. Children are impressionable, and it's straightforward for them to internalize the emotions accompanying adult trauma, particularly anxiety, anger, and fear. Sam's family has seen some trauma, and she spends the film trying to prove to herself and everyone else that she's more than just her trauma. Luckily, she benefits from guidance from someone who has succeeded in doing just that.
At the end of the film, with all the monsters slew, Sam turns to Sidney, the grizzled veteran of trauma, for advice. She asks if she and her family will ever be ok. If Sam wanted Sid to offer comforting platitudes, she was disappointed. Instead, Sidney says that nothing is certain but suggests Sam show herself some grace.
Blaming yourself and focusing pain inward allows trauma to eat you up from the inside, trapping you in a self-destructive loop of your own making. As young Sam begins to process her trauma, that loop is one she's in danger of finding herself in. It's the path Billy chose for himself all those years ago when his family was split apart by Sid's mother's infidelity. He decided to wallow in his pain and subject others to new pain so that he wouldn't be in misery alone. Like many survivors of trauma, Sid chose to keep pushing forward because to do anything else would have been her own destruction. As Sam processes her trauma, she could select Billy's path, which can beget more abuse and trauma, or choose Sidney's.
I guess we'll have to wait for the inevitable Scream 6 to find out.
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