No One Knows Which Killer Killed Who In The Original Scream

For an entire generation of horror fans, "Scream" is one of the most important films in our lives. The film responsible for the rebirth of the slasher genre and arguably the best meta horror film of all time, there's a reason "Scream" is an early favorite to win the /Film Greatest Horror Franchise Ever bracket. What separates "Scream" from a lot of the other slasher greats has always been the focus on survivors Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell), Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox), and Dewey Riley (David Arquette) as the throughline of the franchise, and constantly changing who is responsible for donning the Ghostface mask and terrorizing Woodsboro and beyond.

In the first "Scream" movie, the Ghostface killers are revealed to be Sidney's boyfriend Billy Loomis (Skeet Ulrich) and his best friend/lover Stu Macher (Matthew Lillard). The reveal of Sidney's boyfriend being responsible for her torment and the death of her mother the year previously was a shock, and the reveal that he was working in tandem with Stu made it even more difficult for Sidney to process. However, we only ever see the one Ghostface at a time throughout the film committing crimes. Even when it's very clear that Billy and Stu are working together, like when Ghostface is in one location and then magically appears in a different one almost immediately after, there's no discernable way to tell who was killed by Billy and who was killed by Stu.

Considering the Ghostface murders were performed by stuntmen, not even Ulrich or Lillard have any clue who killed who.

'Nobody Ever Knew'

Skeet Ulrich was recently interviewed by Collider's Perri Nemiroff, where he confessed that not only does he not know who killed when, but that screenwriter Kevin Williamson didn't include that level of insight into the script either.

Nobody ever knew, to be honest. [Laughs] There were no conversations about it. I know that for insurance reasons etc., Ghostface had to be a stuntman. But yeah, we didn't know and it never really was part of the conversation. Now though, going to conventions and stuff, I hear it's a big, burning question and people have theories and have figured things out. And yet, I know Matt Lillard had a conversation with Kevin Williamson and he never thought out who was doing what. I guess that kind of speaks a little bit to the genius of Wes [Craven], that people feel like they have clues in there as to who was who. And I think some are more obvious than others in hindsight, obviously. If I'm appearing right after, it's clearly not me.

The "Scream" fandom wiki claims to have figured out all of the kills, with, of course, the death of Stu's sister Tatum (Rose McGowan) being one of the most controversial. If Billy killed her, Stu knowingly hosted a party while his sister was slaughtered in their garage, but if Stu killed her, his dedication to his best friend/lover meant sacrificing his own flesh and blood. The wiki also lists Stu as being dead at the end of "Scream" but since we didn't see his final breath leave his body, I'm still holding out hope that we get a Matthew Lillard appearance in the upcoming 2022 "Scream."

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