Ghostface Killers: Every Killer in the Scream Movies

Billy Loomis, played by Skeet Ulrich, and Stu Macher, played by Matthew Lillard, are the two Ghostface killers in Scream (1996), directed by Wes Craven. They step out together at the party at Stu's house, after a night in which the killer has already murdered Casey Becker and her boyfriend and attacked Sidney Prescott at home. Billy had been held by the police and then released, so the reveal feels like a suspicion confirmed rather than a surprise from nowhere. Their stated reason is personal: Billy Loomis blamed Sidney's mother for breaking up his family.

Two killers let the plan cover for itself. Billy and Stu stab each other to make their story believable and intend to frame Sidney's father, which turns a wound into a prop. Stu Macher hosts the party where the teens drink, watch scary movies and the body count rises. Sidney, helped by a wounded Gale and Dewey, turns the tables, kills Stu and then shoots Billy in the head when he rises one last time. Randy, the friend who explains the scream rules for surviving a horror film, is nearly killed as well. Read more on the scream 1996 film page.

Scream 2 (1997), directed by Wes Craven, has two Ghostface killers: Mickey, a film student played by Timothy Olyphant, and Mrs. Loomis, who is Nancy Loomis, the mother of Billy from the first film, played by Laurie Metcalf while posing as the reporter Debbie Salt. The killings begin at a preview of Stab, the movie based on the Woodsboro murders, and follow Sidney Prescott to Windsor College. The reveal comes in the campus theater, where Sidney finds Derek tied up, and Mickey is unmasked and shoots Derek.

Mickey wants to be caught and to blame movie violence, which would make him famous. His partner has other plans, because Debbie Salt turns on him and shoots him, then explains that she is Nancy Loomis, that she wants revenge on Sidney, and that she killed Randy for slandering her son. The twist works as a double act, with the second reveal reframing the first. Cotton Weary arrives and shoots her in return for an interview, Mickey comes back and is killed by Gale and Sidney, and Sidney finishes off Nancy with a shot to the head. Mickey's fame motive is a close cousin of Jill Roberts's in scream 4, which is a good reason to watch the two films close together.

Scott Foley plays Roman Bridger, the man directing Stab 3 and the lone killer in Scream 3 (2000), directed by Wes Craven. With the story relocated to a Hollywood studio lot, Ghostface works through the Stab 3 cast, and every victim is left with a photograph of Maureen Prescott, Sidney's late mother. The Hollywood Reporter links the move west to a post Columbine rethink of the series. Dewey and Gale join Detective Mark Kincaid to guard whoever is left, while the caller rings Sidney and imitates voices she trusts.

The unmasking undoes a death that never happened: Roman staged his own. He tells Sidney that he is her half brother, born of a violent assault on their mother, and that Maureen's rejection of him defined his life. He says the murders were meant to pin the blame on Sidney, an excuse she refuses. Sidney stabs him repeatedly in a punishing fight, and Dewey fires the shot that ends him when he rises again. Without an accomplice, the voice tricks do the work of making one killer seem like many.

Rory Culkin plays Charlie Walker and Emma Roberts plays Jill Roberts, the two killers of Scream 4 (2011), directed by Wes Craven. The story lands on the fifteenth anniversary of the Woodsboro murders, when Sidney Prescott returns on a book tour and finds herself under suspicion after evidence turns up in her car. Jill is Sidney's cousin, and Charlie is the movie buff who attaches himself to Gale's inquiry with Robbie, lecturing on how a remake follows its own rules while he is part of the killing. Kirby falls to his knife, and that is how he is exposed.

Jill wanted what Sidney had: fame as the sole survivor. To get it she set up her ex Trevor as the fall guy and killed him, then turned on Charlie and cut herself to pass as a victim. She leaves Sidney for dead after stabbing her. In the hospital, Dewey and Gale spot that Jill knew a detail of Gale's attack that had never been made public. Jill goes to finish Sidney in her room, and Sidney uses a defibrillator and then a gun to stop her. Reporters outside call Jill a hero, handing her the praise she killed for.

Jack Quaid plays Richie Kirsch and Mikey Madison plays Amber Freeman, the killers in Scream (2022), directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett. Richie arrives in Woodsboro as Sam Carpenter's boyfriend after Ghostface leaves Tara Carpenter badly wounded in the opening attack, and Amber is part of the circle that gathers around Tara. The unmasking happens in Amber's home, a house that once belonged to Stu Macher, when Amber shoots Liv and Richie turns out to be her partner.

The pair are devoted to the Stab films and wanted real killings to spark a better sequel, with Sam lined up as the scapegoat. Their trail has already taken Dewey Riley, who is stabbed at the hospital while trying to help and dies, which brings Gale Weathers and Sidney Prescott back to town. In the showdown Gale shoots Amber, who is set alight on a stove, Sam kills Richie, and Tara ends the wounded Amber. Gale then decides against writing a book about the murders. The past reaches Sam directly, since she is the secret daughter of Billy Loomis. Sam Carpenter and Tara Carpenter have their own character entries.

Scream VI (2023) shows five masked killers: Wayne Bailey, Ethan Landry and Quinn Bailey carry out the main plot, and two other people in Ghostface masks commit the opening murders. The film, directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, opens with the murder of a film studies professor and the two students tied to her, then moves to New York, where Sam and Tara Carpenter live with Mindy, Chad, Quinn, Anika and Ethan.

Wayne Bailey, a police detective credited as Detective Bailey and played by Dermot Mulroney, planned everything with his children Ethan, played by Jack Champion, and Quinn, played by Liana Liberato, who turns out to be alive after she seemed to be lost along the way. Their motive is revenge on Sam for killing Richie, the brother of Ethan and Quinn. The reveal takes place in an abandoned theater that works as a shrine of relics from earlier Ghostface killers, where the survivors have set a trap. Tara stabs Ethan, Sam kills Quinn, Kirby Reed ends Ethan by smashing a television over his head, and Sam finishes Wayne while wearing the Ghostface costume that once belonged to her own father. She then drops her father's mask and walks into the city with Tara. A short post credit moment shows Mindy telling her friends that not every movie needs a post credit scene.

Kevin Williamson directed Scream 7 (2026), where three people drive the killings: Karl Gibbs (Kraig Dane), Jessica Bowden (Anna Camp) and Marco Davis, an institution supervisor with no credited actor in the record. The opening has a couple attacked at a Woodsboro house, and the attention then shifts to Tatum, the teenage daughter of Sidney Prescott, who now goes by Sidney Evans. Karl is a patient who escaped a mental institution, and a voice claiming to be Stu Macher steers him. That voice is a fake that Marco built with computer skills. Matthew Lillard is still credited as Stu Macher, and Lillard has said, as reported by Dark Horizons, that a scene showing Stu alive was shot and cut after test screenings.

Jessica, a neighbor of Sidney's, is the second Ghostface. She had killed her abusive husband and her son Lucas, and she held that Sidney's fame came from killing her tormentors, so she meant to shape Tatum into a new final girl. After Ghostface takes Tatum at home, Sidney shoots Marco dead, Tatum frees herself, and the two women kill Jessica together. Sidney's husband Mark survives and goes to hospital, and Sidney mends things with Gale Weathers. A credits scene has Mindy Meeks-Martin asking to deliver the news report herself while Gale watches.

In my opinion, the Ghostface killers keep changing because each film asks what the previous killers would look like to the next generation, and the answers fall into a few families of motive. Revenge runs through the first two films and returns in Scream VI, where Wayne Bailey and his children chase Sam for killing Richie, just as Billy Loomis blamed Sidney's mother and Nancy Loomis wanted revenge on Sidney. Blood relations keep turning up behind the mask: Mrs. Loomis is Billy's mother, Roman Bridger is Sidney's half brother, and the main Scream VI killers are a father and his children.

Fame is the second engine. Mickey wanted to be caught and blame movie violence, Jill Roberts wanted to be the famous sole survivor, and Jessica Bowden believed Sidney's fame came from killing her tormentors and wanted to make Tatum a new final girl. Charlie Walker, Richie Kirsch and Amber Freeman sit in a different camp, the fans, who treat Stab and its sequels as a manual. From a monster design angle, I think this matters because a creature that never changes loses its scare, and Ghostface survives by changing who stands inside the robe while the voice on the phone stays familiar. If you want to see how the films hold up as a whole, the scream movies ranked page goes film by film.

In my opinion, the best Ghostface killers are Billy Loomis and Stu Macher from Scream (1996), and the best single killer is Stu Macher. The order that follows ranks each film's killers as a group, because most of them work as partners, and the reasons are mine alone.

1. Billy Loomis and Stu Macher, Scream (1996). The film plays fair: Billy is held and released, and the party at Stu's house gives the pair every excuse to be in the room. Stu is my pick for the best single killer, since the party at his house is where the whole plan comes together. Perhaps no later pair has matched how neatly that night puts both killers in the room.

1. Jill Roberts and Charlie Walker, Scream 4. Jill's plan is the most daring in the series, because she wounds herself, sets up Trevor to take the blame and then kills Charlie so she can be the only survivor. Her slip in the hospital, mentioning a detail of Gale's attack that was not public, is a clever way to catch a killer. Charlie's remake rules speech, delivered while he is one of the killers, is the best use of the series' habit of explaining itself.

1. Mickey and Mrs. Loomis, Scream 2. Debbie Salt turning on Mickey and shooting him is the best second reveal in any film. Mickey's blame the movies stunt is thin on its own, but Nancy Loomis gives the sequel a direct line back to Scream (1996).

1. Richie Kirsch and Amber Freeman, Scream (2022). Richie works as the boyfriend who is always near the sisters, and the house that used to belong to Stu gives the reveal an extra layer. Their wish to stage murders for a better sequel is a sharp comment on fandom, though it asks the viewer to accept that Stab fandom alone pushes two people to kill.

1. Wayne Bailey, Ethan Landry and Quinn Bailey, Scream VI. A detective father and two children is a strong idea, and Quinn's apparent death turning out to be false is a good jolt. With five masked killers in the film, however, I find the reveal a little crowded, and the shrine theater set piece carries more of the film's memory than the villains do.

1. Roman Bridger, Scream 3. The half brother twist is a bold swing, and the Stab 3 director being the killer fits the Hollywood setting. I find the backstory arrives in a rush near the end, so the motive has less time to land than the others.

1. Karl Gibbs, Jessica Bowden and Marco Davis, Scream 7. The fake Stu voice is a neat trick, and Jessica's belief that Sidney's fame came from killing her tormentors gives the finale a strong motive. It is the newest film, so I may be least fair to it, and I could see it rising on a rewatch.

If you want to compare the films themselves rather than their killers, see scream movies ranked.