LogFAQs > #941851720

Mega Mana posted...

Sydney Prescott (Scream films)

Of course, Wes Craven's Scream, the monolithic, satirical horror film that practically informed nearly every mainstream horror film after it, needed its own version of "the final girl". Enter Neve Campbell, established television drama star, to play the final girl to end all final girls. Her role in the first Scream is rote & straight-forward, by design. She's one of the boys, all together sweet, a little dorky, & fun-loving until her life is turned upside down by a masked killer. It's what the sequels do after that really interests me. Scream 2 is my favorite Scream film for many reasons, and one of those definitely is the handling of Sidney's character. It examines the psychological toll of being one of the only survivors of a massacre and suddenly going from an ordinary girl to an overnight celebrity, with pressures from the media and the stigmata of being attached to such an event, even from friends & colleagues. Very rarely do slasher films portray this anguish and psychological trauma as well as Craven & writer Kevin Williamson do. It's brought even further in Scream 3, where she lives isolated and paranoid while working as a crisis counselor. This ultimately feeds into what really makes Sidney shine, which is her willingness to escape her victim status and rise up to be a hero for others even at the cost of herself. She's so much more than a final girl by the end of the original Scream trilogy, and you can trace that precisely as a through line evolution over the course of the series. I'll be the first to admit true character development in slasher films can be hard to find, but Sidney rises above those reservations and crafts a character that's as truly memorable as her scream-masked assailant.

Rating: 8/10

---

The dead are not quiet in Hill House.
https://imgur.com/LAzHE1a - https://imgur.com/a/dwC3Dfu