10 Cult-Favorite Scream Movie Characters

After being teased as potentially the maniac under Ghostface’s mask, Woodsboro High’s gruff leader (played by eternal Hollywood teen Henry “the Fonz” Winkler) is eliminated from suspicion... after he’s repeatedly stabbed then hung from the goalpost on the football field. His death is horrible despite the goal post thing happening off-screen, and it helps lay the groundwork for the Scream series’ enduring “nobody is safe” policy toward all characters. Why kill the principal? Well, why not?

Other characters in the Scream movies have to deal with prickly high-school relationships and past traumas, but Kenny (Deadwood’s W. Earl Brown) has no easy time as a guy just trying to do his job: cameraman for ambitious, demanding TV reporter Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox), who’s as quick to criticize his slowness as she is his weight problem. There’s no justice for the snack-happy Kenny, who ends up dying in the line of duty—but it’s a sacrifice that Gale’s camera guy in Scream 2 takes note of, wisely deciding to remove himself from the action once Ghostface shows up.

Introduced holding her own against a bunch of sequel-happy movie-geek dudes in a film studies class, Cici gets a dreaded Ghostface call while she’s home alone at her sorority, and soon after becomes one of the movie’s earliest casualties. While she’s a cleverly written character, Cici is mostly memorable because of who plays her, and the timing of her casting: Sarah Michelle Gellar, who had a huge 1997. In addition to Scream 2, she also appeared in I Know What You Did Last Summer and starred in a new TV show called Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

The best and only choice to play the high-maintenance actress cast as Gale Weathers in the in-universe Stab series: Parker Posey, whose campy dramatics make Jennifer the perfect exaggeration of Cox’s exasperated Gale. Scream 3 is easily the most comedic entry in the entire franchise so far, and Posey—particularly in her scenes opposite Cox—is a big reason why. Her agonizing, one-way glass death scene is also one of the series’ best.

Carrie Fisher’s Scream cameo, as a studio archivist named Bianca Burnette who is well aware of how much she resembles Carrie Fisher, is another one of those comedic high points we were just talking about.

Patrick Warburton’s hulking build and deadpan delivery make him the perfect foil for David Arquette’s goofy Dewey, who Stone condescendingly calls “Dewdrop.” Though he’s movie star Jennifer Jolie’s bodyguard, he proves surprisingly bad at watching his own back when Ghostface stabs him (in the back) fairly early in the movie.

Randy’s sister, Martha—played by cult-beloved actor Heather Matarazzo—is the keeper of the self-filmed tapes Randy left behind after his shocking demise in Scream 2. In Scream 3, Martha unexpectedly appears with a Randy tape at the precise moment the characters need further educating on slasher-movie “rules,” hoping it’ll ensure their own survival. (Didn’t work out so well for Randy, but oh well.) She also pops up in the 2022 Scream as an important link to the next generation of characters—more on that in a later slide.

Would-be reboot Scream 4 is probably the most forgettable among the entire series, so you’d be forgiven for not remembering that Alison Brie pops up as Sidney’s shrill, superficial book publicist. When murders begin to happen just as Sidney arrives in Woodsboro to promote her memoir, Rebecca is delighted by the macabre good fortune of it all—figuring the more gory headlines, the more people are going to be interested in her client. (Sidney fires her after she realizes what a ghoul Rebecca actually is.) Hat-tip to Ghostface for seizing the moment and flinging Rebecca’s mutilated corpse smack-dab into the middle of a Woodsboro PD press conference. Hey, if it bleeds, it leads!

Tough and extremely horror-savvy, Kirby (played by Hayden Panettiere, soon after her rise to fame on Heroes, but before her run on Nashville) survived Scream 4, unlike most of her high-school pals—and despite losing what had to have been gallons of blood after meeting the wrong end of the killer’s knife. Panettiere’s been absent from screens for a few years, so it was a delight for fans of both her and the character to see she’d be bringing Kirby back for Scream VI.

Mindy—Martha’s daughter, Randy’s niece—carries on the family tradition of being a complete horror nerd, with a special emphasis on “requels” in general and the Stab series in particular. After barely surviving the carnage of Scream, Mindy (Yellowjackets’ Jasmin Savoy Brown) and her somewhat less interesting twin brother, Chad (Love, Victor’s Mason Gooding), will be back for Scream VI—and we can’t wait to see Mindy take on New York City as well as, presumably, go a few more rounds with Ghostface.

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