The premiere of Scream 6 has brought back tons of familiar faces, with Gale Weathers carrying on the torch from the original trilogy, Kirby returning from Scream 4, and the survivors of 2022’s Scream all together again … this time in New York City. But, as the franchise continues, so does its shock factor. In the trailer alone we saw Ghostface wielding a shotgun and plowing down an entire bodega, making it clear from the start that the movie is more extreme than ever before.
But, surprisingly, the movie’s kill count isn’t that high. Unlike the new Halloween trilogy, where Michael Myers chops up 20 to 30 people (or more) per movie, Scream 6 took the franchise back to its roots, where it’s not about how many people are killed, but more about how suspenseful and terrifying those kills are. Read on to find out what Scream 6‘s best kills are, but beware … this article contains spoilers.
5. Anika (Devyn Nekoda)
One of the most brutal deaths in Scream 6 was Anika, the girlfriend of Scream 5 survivor, Mindy (Jasmin Savoy Brown). While Brown wasn’t that compelling in the last movie, she really perfected her character in Scream 6 and did a great job, which only made it more difficult to watch her and her new girlfriend get attacked. Early in the film, the survivors all camp out with Tara (Jenna Ortega) in her apartment. Sadly, Ghostface is already there, hiding in the bathroom. The first to get stabbed is Anika, who gets a pretty severe jab to her abdomen.
Being a classic NYC apartment, one of the bedroom windows is only about 7 feet away from the next apartment … but they’re also six stories up, so they need to use a ladder to climb across to the other side.
Knowing she’s likely been mortally wounded, Anika crosses the ladder last, letting everyone else escape. By the time Anika gets on the ladder, Ghostface isn’t far behind her, and as she tries to climb across, the killer starts shaking and bouncing the ladder. Paralyzed with fear, Anika holds on as best she can, but after Ghostface tilts the ladder, she slips off, falling and crushing her head on the side of a dumpster as she smashes into the alley below.
It’s an absolutely brutal kill, and it’s also one of the most emotional. Anika sacrificing herself so the others could live is the kind of maturity you don’t often see in horror movies these days, making it even more painful and heartbreaking to watch her die.
4. Ethan (Jack Champion)
“I’ve always wanted to stick something inside you” is the gross and misogynistic line Ethan says to Tara as he tries to stab her. The cute, nerdy, naïve Ethan turns out to be one of the killers at the end of the film and his boyish charm instantly fades once his secret is revealed. Unfortunately for Ethan, he’s the one who’s about to get something stuck inside him … as Tara thrusts a knife straight into his open mouth.
As she turns the knife, Ethan chokes on his own blood and it seeps out of his mouth, dripping down his chin. It’s a gory and intense kill, but considering how much Tara and her sister have been through, and the number of people Ethan has killed by this point, it’s also oddly satisfying to watch him get what he deserves.
3. The Bodega Guy
The wildest scene in the whole movie actually comes relatively early on, when Ghostface chases Tara and her sister into a crowded bodega. After Ghostface stabs a man, the shop owner pulls out a shotgun, but misses, and is ultimately stabbed as well, before the killer takes the gun and shoots him.
The scene is absolutely bizarre and, under normal circumstances, would feel totally out of touch with the Scream movies. But Scream 6‘s tagline says, “New City, New Rules”, letting us know that these new killers aren’t going to follow the old ’90s tropes. Somehow, the scene works and fits in with the movie’s vibe, though, with America’s mass shooting epidemic, something about the bodega scene does feel a little too real and hits a little too close to home, making it terrifying in a whole different way.
2. Gale Weathers (Courtney Cox)
Fortunately, Gale Weathers got the death scene she deserved. She played it smart, she was strong, and she didn’t go down without a fight. Unfortunately, two killers had snuck into her penthouse apartment, and when you’re 50 stories up, you don’t exactly have many places to run. But Gale didn’t go down easily. She used everything she could to fight back, including a gun, a cast iron skillet, and even a vase.
Because of her legacy status with the franchise, emotions run high during the scene because you want her to survive so badly, but after seeing what happened to David Arquette in the last film, you also know that nobody is safe anymore. Gale ends up getting stabbed multiple times and, despite fighting back as hard as she could, she ends up collapsing and seemingly dies.
By the time the medics arrive, she seems all but dead. Luckily, they find she still has a weak pulse. Though Gale didn’t technically die, this was certainly a kill scene because fans thought she had died. Its suspense and chase also made it one of the best scenes in the whole movie.
1. Jason Carvey (Tony Revolori)
Scream 6 continued with Scream 5‘s tradition of not including a Stab-based opening scene. Instead, it focuses on a film studies professor (Samara Weaving) who is lured into a blind date by one of her students, Jason, who wants to kill her because he’s desperate to revive the Stab franchise.
After he murders her, he takes off his mask and goes back to his apartment where he chats with his friend on the phone about how great it felt to murder someone. Immediately, he’s unlikable. First off, nobody wants to see the killer at the start of the film. Secondly, he has the demeanor of an over-privileged man-baby. And lastly, he doesn’t even deliver his lines that well. To have this be our killer in Scream 6 would have been an absolute disaster. Luckily, the guy he’s talking to on the phone isn’t actually his friend, a fact Jason quickly finds out when he discovers his dismembered body has been stuffed in the fridge.
When Ghostface reveals himself, there’s a massive sense of relief. Finally, we have a killer who is in control, smart, and hates Jason as much as the audience does. It’s horrible to say this, but watching Tony get stabbed to death felt good. For a brief moment, it seemed like Scream 6 was going to be an awful movie with an immature douchebag of a killer. Luckily, Scream did what Scream always does and subverted expectations, executing the scene flawlessly and revealing the movie’s first major twist right off the bat.
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