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While every Scream film has its defenders, fan consensus generally sees the first two films as the best, with bitter arguments over whether the films that followed are great, middling, or outright bad, and if so, which ones. In truth, many elements that fans criticize about various later films have roots going back to the very beginning.
- Scream 3 is often regarded as the nadir of the films, the point where the series' soaperizing got out of control and descended into a mess of Ass Pulls. In this, however, it was merely trying to do what the first two films, with their focus on characterization, hidden motivations, and Red Herrings as part of a whodunnit mystery, had pulled off far more successfully.
- The first problem was in how it tried to tie everything back to the series' heroine Sidney. In the first two films, the lead killer out of the Big Bad Duumvirate had some personal connection to Sidney, but writer Kevin Williamson made sure to tie it to information that had already been revealed or otherwise implied in the story. In the first film, it was so heavily hinted that one particular character was the killer that the fact that they weren't a Red Herring was a twist in its own right, while in the second, the killer was never seen with anybody who might recognize them. Furthermore, the backstory was secondary to the whodunit mystery at the center of the film; the most important question in both films always concerned Ghostface's identity. The third film's plot, on the other hand, revolved entirely around Sidney's family backstory, and the killer's motivation hinged on familial relations that weren't even hinted at for that character before The Reveal. What's more, the film's Horrible Hollywood setting, as opposed to Sidney's high school in the first film and her college in the second, made Sidney's connection to the story feel a lot more tenuous, as she was not a central character until the third act. Many fans blame new writer Ehren Kruger, who had a very different understanding of the characters, for the third film's sequelitis, as well as a Troubled Production that saw substantial rewrites, including a different killer.
- Related to the above, Ghostface's identity was often played as a Plot Twist, especially when concerning the lead killer. The third film used similar tricks to the first two films to disguise the killer's identity and shock the audience, but it was widely criticized for using an Ass Pull for The Reveal.
- A criticism of the third film's killer was how he faked his own death to avoid suspicion by the protagonists and the audience. Not only does this criticism apply to the first film as well, said film was praised for using this twist. The difference was that the first film had the subsequent revelation that there were two killers, which answered the question of how the killer managed to pull that trick off. In addition, none of the protagonists ever checked Billy's "dead" body in the first film, unlike the third film, in which Gale checked Roman's "corpse" and confirmed that the body was in fact dead.note Thus, when the reveal that Roman wasn't actually dead and was the sole Ghostface came around, many viewers felt cheated.
- As mentioned before, most viewers criticized the killer's secret familial connection to Sidney, a criticism that also applied to Scream 2, where the killer had a secret familial connection to the first film's killer and was operating under a disguise. Nevertheless, the reveal in that film was more acceptable for several reasons. For one, Nancy Loomis was a mentioned albeit unseen character in the first film, whereas the killer's relationship with Sidney in the third film was a retcon. Furthermore, the second film hinted multiple times that Billy's mother was one of the killers, meaning that savvy viewers would be on the lookout for a middle-aged woman, a description under which "Debbie Salt" fell, not to mention that Gale did recognize Debbie Salt as a familiar face upon first glance. While the third film hinted similarly that Sidney's half-sibling was the killer, said description was unhelpful in identifying them, as no clues were given as to who was the half-sibling in question (including Roman, the actual culprit), leading to viewers criticizing the reveal as a cop-out.
- Roman's voice-changer was a divisive element of Scream 3 as it served as a convenient Plot Device that moved the protagonists to Milton's mansion for the finale. However, by the same definition, the "normal" voice-changer in the previous installments was also a plot device since it gave Ghostface a distinctive voice while perfectly disguising his or her identity, allowing for a functional whodunnit and raising the paranoia factor that anyone could be the killer. Basically, Roman's voice-changer was an exaggeration of the normal voice-changer as it not only gave him the typical Ghostface voice but also the voices of his victims, which was harder for the contemporary audiences to accept, especially since such deepfake technology was impossible during the early 2000s and, as such, appeared to be something straight out of a science-fiction work.
- Finally, there was the specific plot element of the murder of Maureen Prescott, Sidney's mother who had been killed a year prior to the events of the original film over her promiscuous and adulterous ways. Even many fans regard this aspect of the backstory as carrying a strong tinge of Slut-Shaming, though it's generally agreed that the quality of The Reveal helped temper the misogynistic implications, particularly with how the lead killer was portrayed as a complete and utter psychopath who was just using Maureen as an excuse to kill people. The third film made Maureen the focus of most of the plot, and with that film's drop in quality, it was a lot harder to ignore, even with Sidney's immensely gratifying Shut Up, Hannibal! moment during The Reveal.
- As for the TV adaptation, that show returning to the well of relying on the Final Girl's family backstory likewise became one of its most highly criticized aspects. While the Brandon James storyline in Season 1 lacked the slut-shaming undertones of the Maureen Prescott storyline from the films, it was still seen as a retread of many of the most unpopular plot elements of Scream 3, this time without even a decent performance from the actor playing the killer. This may be why, despite Season 2 ending on a cliffhanger, the third season, titled Scream: Resurrection, was a full Continuity Reboot with a new cast and show runners.
- The Ghostface unmaskings of Scream VI have the same faults as those in Scream 3 to a larger degree.
- Like Billy and Roman, the Baileys do the fake death tactic to allow Quinn Bailey to act as Ghostface without arousing further suspicion. In the case of the fake death, while Roman's infamous blood pulse ruse is an Ass Pull with no foreshadowing or explanation in the film itself, it is a real-life magic trick as noted by Wes Craven on the audio commentary track, so it was realistic that Gale (a news reporter) would be fooled. On the other hand, Wayne Bailey faked his daughter's death by substituting her body with a corpse, which led to multiple viewers finding it implausible that the cops and FBI agent Kirby didn't test "Quinn's corpse" for proper identification and see through the deception.
- Similar to Nancy and Roman, the Baileys reveal that they were using fake names and have a secret familial connection to another important character; specifically, they're related to Richie Kirsch, the previous Ghostface from Scream 5. The problem here is that somehow none of the protagonists familiar with Richie — Sam (Richie's ex-girlfriend), Kirby (a FBI agent who did research on the previous Ghostfaces), and Gale (a crime reporter who recently wrote a book about Richie and Amber) — recognize the Baileys as Richie's relatives, and this isn't getting into how Wayne got past the NYPD's background check to become a New York City cop. On the other hand, while Roman's relation to Sidney is a controversial retcon, it is explained he is a secret Child by Rape, so no one but his parents would know, and neither parent, Milton and Maureen, have any reason to spill the beans since Milton conducted the rape in the first place, whereas Maureen wanted to avoid thinking about her old life. Likewise, Nancy put more effort into disguising herself by not only using a pseudonym like the Baileys, but also by losing weight and undergoing facial surgery, yet Scream 2 plays this more realistically as Gale still recognizes Nancy as a familiar face during their first meeting (although Gale misidentifies her as someone else) and Nancy herself avoids crossing paths with Sidney, who does see through the disguise upon Nancy's reveal.
- On a more minor note, while Scream (2022) was well-received, the casting of one of the killers drew criticism. Some viewers found it hard to buy the petite, 5'3" Mikey Madison as Ghostface scoring one of the most brutal kills in the entire franchise, stabbing the much larger Dewey in the front and back simultaneously. Scream 4 had it even worse on paper, casting the even more petite, 5'2" Emma Roberts as Ghostface. However, it wasn't an issue there, because that film put Roberts in seven-inch platform boots to make her character look less slight-of-frame compared to the rest of the cast, and never had the actor's Ghostface carry out such a physically demanding kill.
- Another criticism of the 2022 film concerned the new Final Girl Sam having visions of her dead father, the first film's killer Billy Loomis. This was one of the most poorly-received elements of an otherwise well-received film, coming across to many fans as a jarring introduction of supernatural elements into a series otherwise grounded in reality, as well as an excuse to have a digitally de-aged Skeet Ulrich reprise his role as Billy for nostalgia's sake. Scream 3 did something similar with Sidney having visions of her dead mother Maureen, and while that film is generally regarded as the weakest in the series, Sidney's story is usually one of the few things about it that even its harshest critics will defend. The difference is that 3 made it very clear that Sidney's visions were either nightmares or hallucinations brought on by her repeated traumas or Ghostface screwing with her, and that she wasn't actually seeing her mother's ghost. The new voice changer that Ghostface gets in the third film, which lets him perfectly imitate other people's voices, is itself a point of contention for many fans, but the film still depicts it as a mundane, non-sci-fi explanation for why Sidney hears Maureen's voice over the phone. The 2022 film, meanwhile, takes the Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane route, as "Billy" outright converses with Sam on multiple occasions and during the finale seems to point her to a weapon she can use, implying that it's not merely a figment of her imagination brought on by her mental instability but an outright Spirit Advisor.
- Characters having Plot Armor and requiring extreme injuries to go down for good goes back to the very first movie, where Wes Craven threw in a scene at the end revealing that Dewey survived due to positive fan reception to his character. In that film, Dewey was stabbed only once in the back, an injury that's more than plausible for an ordinary person to survive, and in a movie built around a Deconstructive Parody of Slasher Movie tropes, showing him at the end getting wheeled out on a stretcher was a fun subversion of the countless slasher victims who have died from similarly simple injuries, and a reminder that it's harder than it looks to kill somebody with a knife. What's more, the next film reveals that he was left partly debilitated by the attack. Later films, however, wound swing to the opposite extreme to the point of outright No One Could Survive That! moments, seemingly out of a fear of not being able to bring characters back for the sequels. It reached its nadir when the sixth film showed Chad getting stabbed in the chest over a dozen times, an attack that would leave him Deader than Dead not just in any other slasher but probably in real life as well, and still getting the Dewey treatment at the end.
- Likewise, most of the prior sequels to Scream VI did a better job of hiding the Plot Armor of the trio as they killed off the other returning characters to raise the stakes and to tease at the idea that Anyone Can Die.note The only exception to this rule is Scream 4, but that movie still killed off important characters with plenty of screen time and development, subverting the movie's Changing of the Guard premise that advertised the next-gen characters as the new protagonists to replace Sidney, Gale, and Dewey. In contrast, most of the victims in Scream VI are no-name extras or Bit Characters with little screen time and characterization, making it more obvious that they are just there to pad the body count. More importantly, 4 only had to keep three veteran characters alive whereas VI let six returning characters survive.
- On the flipside, there's the issue of the Ghostfaces having plot-armor. Characters making stupid decisions dates back to the opening scene of the first movie, where Casey keeps talking to Ghostface on the phone instead of hanging up and calling the police. However, this was part of the film's reconstruction of certain slasher tropes by showing that such situations were inherently unpredictable. Sidney sarcastically says that victims in horror movies are idiots for running upstairs and not outside when chased, only to do the exact same thing right afterwards when she can't unlock the front door fast enough. The climax showed the door swung both ways as well, when Sidney gets the upper hand on Billy and Stu by adopting their own tactics and getting the drop on them, and famously defying Joker Immunity by shooting Billy in the head when he gets a second wind. The next few films also had the characters make some dumb decisions that allowed Ghostface to live until the climax, but also upped the ante of what Ghostface was shown as capable of, note keeping them threatening. Also, in the first three films, the victims were usually civilians with no survival experience whom Ghostface would attack one or two at a time note and the second film kills off Randy to show that being Genre Savvy alone could not save you. The protagonists adapted as well, as shown when Sidney defeats Roman by being Crazy-Prepared. From the fourth film onwards, however, these trends of escalation largely stopped, making obvious how Ghostface was so succesful because his victims constantly failed to keep their guard up, carry weapons, fight back, or finish the killer upon gaining the upper hand despite the cast including an increasing number of supposedly smart and experienced characters with (who would be attacked in large groups). Even the excuse of the killers needing to live until the climax lost its credibility with time, since by the fourth or fifth films, there being two killers instead of one was no longer a twist note . The sixth film, had a grand total of five killers, one of which certainly could have been captured or killed before the ending. By the time of the fifth film as well, online discourse about how to survive horror movies had also evolved from speaking about general tropes in the way characters like Randy popularized, to strategic analysis and scene-by-scene breakdowns, making the films' supposed horror experts seem outdated by constantly discussing what kind of movie they were in instead of actual ways to defend themselves.
