Headscratchers / Scream 4

• Ghostface being revealed to be Charlie and Jill. During the murders that take place at Jill's house one of the killers is seen at the Stab movie marathon and the other killer is said to be with someone else. After the murders, Sidney immediately leaves for Kirby's house where both killers already are. There's a significant amount of time before Sidney shows up, even though the killer would conceivably left around the same time, so how did the killer get to Kirby's house so fast? And who killed the cops and Kate?
  • While there's been a theory of a third killer, Jill does states she was the one that killed her mother. And considering that the Kirby IM could have been a decoy, Jill had enough time to kill the cops, as well as her mother with or without Charlie's help.
    • But if Sidney and the killer leave Jill's house at roughly around the same time, why does it take Sidney so much longer to get to Kirby's house?
    • Word of God states that its supposedly to be Stu's house and also it could have taken Sidney some time there because she hadn't returned to her hometown in some time.
    • Jill actually says "My own mother had to die", not quite the same thing as "I killed my own mother." I definitely buy the 3rd killer idea though. I mean, to kill Kate and the cops, Jill or Charlie would have to be in 2 places at once and their bodies are notably smaller than that of the actors in the ghostface costume when Jill wasn't wearing it. Besides, I just don't buy that Charlie could kick down that door.
    • I agree, but maybe this Ghostface was running on virginal power... and the juice.
    • Even if so, it stil doesn't explain Olivia's death. Hoss and Perkins were in the car when Olivia got home and went up stairs. This means Charlie was already in her closet when she goes upstairs. Then, just before Olivia gets butchered, Hoss and Perkins are chasing after Ghostface running around outside, with Jill and Charlie's locations being known, (Jill in her room and Charlie killing poor Olivia) who were they chasing? I'd buy a prankster except they say something like "He's like a ghost," which implies it's actually Ghostface.
    • Hoss and Perkins little chase could've just been Trevor after his talk with Jill. He is wearing dark clothing and makes note of calling himself a ninja, so it's possible he was noticed on his way out, evaded the police, only to come back after the killer struck. "He's like a ghost" was just to throw you off. Ghost, ninja, same difference
    • It's not known how long Jill was gone for. She could have only just left by the time Sidney discovered her room was empty. She's just killed the cops so she panics when she sees her mother's car pull up and kills her to give Sidney a reason to go to Kirby's alone. So then she just hurries over to Kirby's. She's best friends with her so perhaps she knows the shortest way to the house? Remember she can cut through other people's gardens and go anywhere while Sidney has to take the road. To a house she hasn't been to before. At night.
    • I buy that, but also the same thing happened in the first Scream when Sidney is attacked by someone (possibly Stu) in Ghostface attire in the bathroom. A lot of Scream is based off of misdirection really.
    • I'm pretty sure the bathroom attack was a prankster. Stu was with Tatum and Billy was just outside the bathroom. Besides, we saw a ton of people running around and it's not like he evaded police officers unlike in Scream 4.
  • Kirby picked Jill up in her car, and Kirby drives fast as established in her introductory scene, which would give her a head start over Sidney, who has never been to Kirby's house.
    • But again, it was Stu’s house, where Sidney has been, so that doesn’t quite work.
    • Kirby only lived in Stu's house in the early drafts of the script. The final cut states that Kirby's home is on 329 Whispering Lane, a completely different location from Stu's place on 261 Turner Lane. The above point still stands.
• Related to the above: how did Charlie silence all of Gail's cameras? He was drinking beer and clearly hanging around with Robby at all times, hosting the party and watching the film. That means he can't really snoop around looking for cameras, let alone stalk Gail as she's planting them (although he was likely her attacker at the end of the scene). Even if he drank non-alcoholic beer to stay sober, that doesn't help the other problems. It couldn't have been Jill as she was established to be elsewhere. Lends further credence to the idea of there being a third killer, who got away.
  • He could have been just pretending to drink. And he and Robbie only introduce each film before it plays. So that gives him roughly 90 minutes to snoop around and find the cameras. All he has to do is tell Robbie he needs to go to the bathroom, slip the costume on and try and find Gail. And Robbie is drinking and getting into the movie, so he's probably not going to be too concerned with checking to see where Charlie is.
• In Scream 4, it is shown that the fictional movie-within-a-movie Stab 3 ended up being completed. How did the studio manage to finish the movie when most of the cast, including the director, are dead?
  • They started from scratch. Stab is a Cash-Cow Franchise in the Scream universe, so it's not like a little killing spree is gonna stop them — since when has Hollywood been more concerned with good taste than box office receipts? Hell, the bloodbath surrounding the production probably turned it into a bigger hit than it would've been otherwise, judging by how it got four sequels in the following decade while, back in the real world, it took eleven years to make another Scream movie.
    • In Scream 4, they mention that only the first three films were based on fact. They started from scratch, using the events of Scream 3 as the basis for Stab 3. The "return to Woodsboro" plot originally planned for Stab 3 was abandoned in favor of the more interesting story that actually happened.
• It is shown that Stab 6 actually takes place inside Stab 7 (the characters in Stab 7 are seen watching it). Does this mean that Stab 7 is actually the sixth Stab movie? Or was there a seperate Stab 6?
  • The marathon was said to include "all seven" Stab movies, so presumably Stab 6 exists. The movies apparently got increasingly weird as time went on, so perhaps Stab 7 was just bizarrely meta.
  • I get that Stab 7 opening with the beginning of Stab 6 was a twist to throw off viewers of Scream 4, but how would that work within the Scream universe? If anybody had seen Stab 6, they'd instantly recognize those events once Stab 7 started. Thus, it's less a twist and more just a really confusing prank to make people think they're watching Stab 6 again.
  • Imagine this, you've seen Stab 6, and you watch Stab 7. The opening is either (A) the opening from Stab 6, which, if it was me, would make me take out the DVD and make sure it was the right one or (B) a different opening that claims to be Stab 6, which, because you've already seen it, you know to be fake, thus ruining the twist. Either way it doesn't work.
  • Y'know Friday the 13th Part 2 opens with an extended replay of the climax of the first movie. So yeah, it's been done. And I think the characters point out that the Stab movies have gotten worse in quality with each installment - so maybe the silly idea is meant to be seen as silly in-universe.
• How on earth could Jill not even take five seconds to make sure whether Sidney was dead or not? For someone trying to be the Magnificent Bastard, they sure clutched the Idiot Ball harder than any of the previous killers.
  • Sidney was half-dead after getting stabbed. She survived Jill's attack because she was tough as nails. Any other character would die from those wounds. Yeah, Jill was smug, but unlike the other killers, her smugness had a base in reality for the most of the movie.
• How did they manage to have a final showdown in an ICU without anyone noticing? An ICU is staffed around the clock, with regular checks on patients. And they weren't exactly quiet.
  • A deleted scene reveals that they were in a basement meeting during those scenes.
  • And it's only a small town hospital. And perhaps they did hear the commotion or notice Jill wasn't in her bed and were running around looking for the source of the noise. They just didn't get to the room until after Jill had been killed.
• Why did Jill and Charlie go after Olivia the way they did? It makes for great horror material for us due to the whole "nowhere is safe" thing. However, for the same reason, it seems absolutely bonkers to try in-universe. The house is under permanent guard by two policemen, Jill couldn't aid in the attack in any way (which kind of makes you wonder how Charlie managed to pull the cop distraction all on his own), and Charlie had to hold a long phone conversation while hiding in a closet next to his victim, risking being heard. I know they need to keep killing for their plan to work, but it's not like the original Ghostface only targetted people close to the final victim.
  • Out of universe it's to shock the audience with the Red Herring but maybe in-universe they had a contingency in case Olivia heard Ghostface in the closet. It is Jill who calls Olivia in the first place to Troll her, but maybe that was to distract her with the noise on their phonecall so she wouldn't hear the sounds coming from her closet. Kirby does say "I can barely hear you", suggesting Charlie was whispering on the call. I think Olivia may have had her phone on loudspeaker so if she heard the Ghostface voice, maybe she thought it was coming from the call instead of her closet?
  • Charlie is only murdering out of love for Jill, so it makes sense that he would be the one taking unnecessary risks to kill Olivia. On the other hand, Jill considers him disposable as seen when she kills both Trevor and him to establish them as scapegoats for the murder spree, so it is fairly in-character for Jill to sit back and not put herself in danger while Charlie murders Olivia. As for the cop distraction, the figure the cops saw was likely Trevor, who already sneaked past the same cops before when visiting Jill and immediately reappears after Ghostface disappears, so Charlie got lucky there, at least if one goes with the idea that Jill didn't intend Trevor's presence to be a diversion for the cops.
  • Olivia in the scene is also doing a lot of different things like changing into her pyjamas, walking around, talking and brushing her teeth - all actions that might muffle the sound of Charlie in the closet. Olivia also is standing at the window for the end of that scene and quite far away from her closet, so maybe just far enough away that she wouldn't hear anything.