Matthew Lillard defended Campbell against Paramount, who wouldn't pay her what she wanted, saying Neve is the face of Scream, and she is the final girl. Before Scream, Jamie Lee Curtis was one of the most popular final girls for her role as Laurie Strode in the Halloween franchise.
As Randy says in Scream when he's listing his rules for surviving a scary movie, Laurie was the virginal, innocent, good girl, and that's how she survived. Before Scream, these were the typical rules for slasher films. The film series has gone on to make its own rules, including having Ghostface fake his own death, making viewers believe that character can't be the killer, only for them to return during the big reveal. Scream 6 broke a massive rule by making Ghostface reveal himself immediately after the opening kill, only to be killed off by a different Ghostface. Though one of the biggest rules Scream breaks is the final girl trope.
6 Sidney's Survival In Scream
As Randy says in his rules, Laurie survived Michael Myers because she never had sex. The Scream character believes in order for anyone to survive the Woodsboro murders, they also have to be virgins. Throughout the film, Sidney struggles with sleeping with her boyfriend, Billy Loomis, because she's still coping with her mother's murder and isn't in the right headspace. However, she finally has sex with him later in the film, which seems like a bad idea according to Randy's rules. When Billy's revealed as Ghostface, he and Stu even mock her, telling her since she's not a virgin anymore, she has to die.
However, Sidney has no intentions of playing by the rules. The Scream protagonist breaks this final girl trope by teaming up with Gale Weathers to take down Stu and Billy, proving Randy's rules are outdated and no longer apply. Sidney goes on to fight off Ghostface for four more movies before her Scream 6 exit, and as Lillard said, despite not being the innocent, good girl character Laurie was, Sidney is the final girl.
5 Jill Being Scream 4's Ghostface
Scream 4 premiered 11 years after Scream 3 seemingly ended the franchise as a trilogy. The film was marketed toward a new generation with a cast of actors who had only been children during the original Scream films. In the film, Campbell returns as Sidney with fellow legacy characters Gale and Dewey, but the new group of teenagers Ghostface torments are Jill Roberts, Sidney's cousin, Kirby Reed, Charlie Walker, and Trevor Sheldon. Through promotion for the film and up until the Ghostface reveal, it seems Jill is the new final girl for the next generation. She's the film's main character and seems to be filling Sidney's shoes.
Jill shares many final girl qualities, but the big Ghostface reveal flips the final girl trope on its head when Jill is actually behind the Ghostface mask. It turns out Jill's plan all along was to become a famous final girl and stop living in Sidney's shadow. Unfortunately, she didn't stand a chance against her cousin, and Sidney made sure to end her plan.
4 Kirby Secretly Survives In Scream 4
Jill might have thought she was going to be the Scream 4 final girl, but it was actually Kirby. Kirby's final girl status is shocking because she wasn't the main character in Scream 4 but was Jill's sidekick until Jill was revealed as Ghostface. Kirby was also brutally stabbed and seemingly died, though it was later confirmed she had survived. Eleven years later, Kirby was confirmed alive in Scream 5 when an interview of hers appeared on Ghostface's computer. She then appears in Scream 6 as an FBI agent and helps Sam and her friends take down the three Ghostfaces at the end of the film.
3 Billy Loomis Being Sam's Father
Going back to Randy's rules, the final girl was always innocent. While Sidney broke most of the final girl rules long ago, she was always confident she was a good person, which made the audience confident she was never going to be Ghostface in any of the sequels. With Sam, not even she is sure if she's capable of taking on the role of the film's killer. Sam is Billy's illegitimate daughter, and since he was the original Ghostface, she's constantly battling the possibility that she's just as capable of killing as he is.
At the beginning of Scream 6, Sam's therapist is concerned about her saying she felt good about killing Ghostface. She battles the same issue at the end of the film when she violently murders Detective Bailey, and even her sister Tara Carpenter is worried about the exhilaration she gets from killing Ghostface. While she ultimately drops the Ghostface mask at the end of the film, signifying she's done questioning herself and accepts she is a good person, she's the first final girl with the potential to become a villain.
2 Sam And Tara Both Being Final Girls
Scream 5 turned its opening scene on its head when Tara was attacked by Ghostface but managed to survive, unlike the other victims. She made it through the rest of the film with her sister, too, and then survived Scream 6. In the original Scream films, Sidney was the main final girl, even though Gale made it through every Ghostface attack with her. Gale and Dewey, before his Scream 5 murder, were considered legacy characters.
With Scream 5 and Scream 6, Tara seems as much of a final girl as Sam, changing the film's dynamic. This means in future films, Sam and Tara will likely continue to fight off Ghostface together and survive his attacks, drastically different from other films that only focus on one final girl.
1 There's Always More Than Just One Survivor
In slasher films like Paul Lynch's 1980 film Prom Night, there's typically one survivor of the movie's massacres. At the end of Prom Night, Curtis runs out of her high school as the sole survivor of her brother's murders. However, Scream defies the rule that there needs to be just one final girl in more ways than Sam and Tara's duo.
The original Scream saw Gale, Dewey, and Randy as survivors, along with Sidney. In the requels, Sam, Tara, Mindy, and her brother Chad are all survivors, and they refer to themselves as the core four. Scream has proven there doesn't have to be just one final girl and that other characters can survive, and the film will still work.
