Scream Directors Reveal Details About The Spoiler-Y Cameo, You Know The One
The new "Scream" is chock-full of homages and allusions to the franchise's past, some overt and some more subtle. One of the biggest of them involves a legacy character who is no longer with us ... and if you want to know more, get your butt ready for some spoilers.
Billy Loomis (once again played by Skeet Ulrich) returns to us in the new "Scream," and directors Tyler Gillett and Matt Bettinelli-Olpin opened up about the decision to include the beloved-yet-hated character in their film to Collider in an interview:
"For us, Billy and Stu are some of the most iconic slasher villains of all time, and to have him pop up in the movie, it feels like such a moment where the movie is aware of its lineage, it's aware of its past, it's also aware of itself as a movie in a fun way, right? It's sort of like, 'Hey, we're gonna have some fun. We're gonna Hollywood this thing up for a few moments.' And then to also give that character a bit of an arc, right? We loved that the villain that started it all has a bit of a hero's return in a weird way, as actually a part of Sam, of that character fully realizing that she's a complete person, it's just that a part of herself is dark and is a thing that she would like to keep hidden and ultimately has to come out for the movie to resolve. We just loved that turn for the character."
The Radio Silence filmmakers — who are perhaps best known for their film "Ready or Not" and their segment in "V/H/S," directed alongside the third Radio Silence member, Chad Villella, and Justin Martinez — also noted that the character's resurgence (as a hallucination, mind you, not a ghost) was important for the movie's main character, Sam (Melissa Barrera):
"We also really loved what that character coming back did for our lead, right? There's so much at work in that Billy father/daughter relationship that's about legacy and about the things that you inherit and how you move on from them and what sort of pieces of those legacies you take with you, which is obviously also what the movie as a whole is about, and that baton pass from one generation to another."
Breaking the Scream Rules
Obviously, Billy's inclusion in the fifth installment is a massive spoiler — but beyond that, it's a decision that pushes the boundaries the "Scream" franchise has already set forth for us. After all, these movies are all about rules, but rules are made to bend and break. In fact, Gillett added that the filmmakers hope viewers see their intentions with the choice:
"Our reaction that we hope audience members have when he pops up was our reaction reading the script. We were all just like, 'What the f—k?' And we also knew that it was really gonna push the guardrails out on what you expect a Scream movie to do. We also knew that that was one hundred percent the reason to do it."
As someone who really adored the new "Scream," I have to say that the choice was a perfect addition to the film that both satisfied some of our legacy desires as longtime fans while also setting the audience up for new twists. We're familiar with a leading lady like Sidney Prescott, who is known for her rationale and quick thinking. By giving us a protagonist who is essentially unreliable — though through no fault of her own — it puts the audience in a position we've never been in before: we're not sure who we can really trust. There is no anchor. It was a bold and risky move, and it really paid off. In fact, Sam's supposed weakness ended up being one of her greatest assets. Man, you just gotta love movies.