‘Scream VI’ writers reveal the inspiration behind the shocking opening scene

Besides the gory murders, permeating tension about who’s next, and the reveal of Ghostface’s real identity, the trademark sequences of the Scream movies helped secure the franchise its iconic status.

After decades, viewers can still recall the fateful night when Drew Barrymore’s plans of watching horror movies were rudely interrupted by Ghostface; who tormented, stabbed, and eviscerated her. Ever since, the subsequent movies have religiously followed the narrative of gruesomely obliterating the very first onscreen character.

Scream VI has also continued Wes Craven’s tradition by killing off the very first character. This time it is film studies professor Laura Crane (Samara Weaver), who we see sitting at a bar waiting for her date until the guy she’s about to meet calls her – and under the pretext of being unable to locate the address – leads her into a dark and desolate alley for Ghostface to emerge and brutally murder her.

However, there are slight variations, since the killer takes off his mask and reveals himself as a student one aiming to finish the movie started by Richie (Jack Quaid). Not long into the its running time , we see him receiving a call from another Ghostface, who ends up murdering Jason and his accomplice, Greg.

Speaking about his rather layered and twisted opening, writer, James Vanderbilt told ComicBook how he thought of dual murder as a fun concept never seen before, adding that the scene is a glimpse into a killer’s perspective.

“We talk about every permutation in the early days when we’re just pitching and brainstorming, but I think we really wanted the story to center on the sister characters, Sam and Tara, and really dig into the emotion of that. But we definitely wanted you to think that we might be having a Scream movie from either Ghostface’s perspective, or at least knowing the identity of one of the killers, because that’s just a fun idea and it’s also shocking.

That’s never been done before. That’s making you lean forward a little bit. So I’m glad that it played that way, that was definitely intentional. I think that we did want to then pivot back and have a twist or a reveal on a reveal, and have the Ghostface get a call from the actual Ghostface of our movie, who does not care about movies. We’re in uncharted waters at that point, and it’s like, ‘Well, then what is this movie about? How is this going to work?’ That was it, that was the intent”

It seems like with every installment, there’s a tendency to edge towards more creative plotlines in introducing Ghostface, and let’s hope we would have something more intriguing to experience in the inevitable Scream VII.