One of the elements that made the Scream franchise successful is the fact that the slasher movies are populated with characters who are knowledgeable about the horror genre and can use that skill to try and help their friends survive the onslaught of whatever killer is wearing the Ghostface mask in the latest installment.
The references in the Scream movies supply viewers with a nearly endless watchlist of worthy horror titles, but 10 movies in particular stand out among the rest.
Note: In the interest of making this list remotely interesting to read, we have opted to exclude certain obvious titles like The Exorcist that are minted classics and don’t really need more attention thrown their way.
10. Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984)
Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter may have failed to live up to its name (as the fourth of 12 movies, it’s about as final as Jason Voorhees is verbose), but it is certainly worthy of being deemed Kirby Reed’s (Hayden Panettiere) favorite Friday the 13th movie during a scene where she and fellow horror geek Mindy (Jasmin Savoy Brown) are sizing up each other’s knowledge of the genre in Scream VI. The movie is the platonic ideal of the 1980s slasher movie, combining gory exploitation thrills with John Hughes-esque teen hijinks.
9. A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987)
Naturally, the slasher genre gets a lot of play when it comes to the references in the Scream movies. However, while the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise (which was created by Scream 1 through 4 director Wes Craven) is heavily mentioned throughout, Dream Warriors is only directly referenced in Scream VI, when Mindy warns that the main characters are in danger this time around. Not to spoil Dream Warriors, but it is partially the fact that the stakes are so high that makes it such a worthy sequel. It is deliciously over-the-top at times, as Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund) doles out creative kills and snappy one-liners, but there is always an undercurrent of true menace that makes the film feel genuinely dangerous.
8. House of Wax (2005)
Kirby’s iconic moment in Scream 4 where she rattles off recent horror remakes in an attempt to answer one of Ghostface’s questions is largely meant to critique the genre for how often it had returned to the IP well over the previous half a decade. While many of the titles that she lists are worth avoiding, 2005’s House of Wax (a remake of the 1953 Vincent Price movie of the same name) avoids being a generic retread by completely reimagining the story of a wax museum with a sinister secret, supercharging it with new special effects and a modern tonal sensibility. The new version is gory, aesthetically captivating, and vigorously intense.
7. It Follows (2014)
It Follows is one of the “elevated horror” movies that Tara Carpenter (Jenna Ortega) cites when explaining her taste to the slasher-loving Ghostface while he’s trying to challenge her with trivia in 2022’s Scream (the fifth installment in the seven-film franchise). While she doesn’t succeed in getting him to change his tack, she does prove that she knows a good movie when she sees it. It Follows is a chilling slow-burn horror movie about a relentless, if slow, creature that walks ceaselessly after its victims while taking on different guises, turning nearly every frame into a tense game of “Is that person in the background a killer or just a random passerby?”
6. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)
Invasion of the Body Snatchers, which Dr. Stone (Henry Czerny) is watching in Scream VI, is just as much of a rock-solid classic as the 1978 version that has eclipsed it in popularity. The movie, which follows a doctor discovering that his small town is being invaded by aliens masquerading as his neighbors, is an exquisitely tense slice of Cold War paranoia.
5. Shaun of the Dead (2004)
Edgar Wright’s breakthrough feature Shaun of the Dead, which Jill Roberts (Emma Roberts) and Kirby watch before being menaced by Ghostface over the phone in Scream 4, is proof that Woodsboro teens hadn’t lost their spark in the 15 years since the debut of the original movie. Shaun is both a riotously funny romantic comedy and a deadly serious zombie movie, marrying the two genres in a way that straight-up shouldn’t be possible and creating an endlessly compelling, emotionally authentic exploration of how it takes the zombie apocalypse to shake the titular slacker out of his rut.
4. The House on Sorority Row (1983)
The House on Sorority Row is one of the many school-set slashers that horror geek Randy Meeks (Jamie Kennedy) references while mocking Ghostface about following him and Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) to college. While it is one of many sorority-centric slashers that were released throughout the 1980s, The House on Sorority Row stands head and shoulders above the rest thanks to its Hitchcockian narrative (sorority girls are stalked by a vengeful killer after a prank gone wrong leads to their house mother’s death) and stylish presentation.
3. Suspiria (1977)
In Scream 4, horror nerd Charlie Walker (Rory Culkin) attempts to flirt with Kirby by saying that he’s impressed that she owns Suspiria on DVD. Though she rightfully shuts down his attempt to proclaim himself as the master of horror knowledge, her DVD shelf is certainly a thing of beauty, in large part because it contains titles like Suspiria. Dario Argento’s 1977 masterpiece combines phantasmagorical killings (perpetrated by a coven of witches that runs a ballet school) with eye-popping colors and, in the process, leads viewers on a surreal and terrifying journey into hell.
2. The Babadook (2014)
2022’s Scream reveals that The Babadook is Tara Carpenter’s favorite scary movie (to the point that the film is bookended by lines where she references it). She calls it “an amazing
meditation on motherhood and grief,” which it is. But it is also a pulse-pounding horror movie thanks to the way it amplifies every little annoyance of being a single mother into an unbearably tense thrill ride.
1. Candyman (1992)
Between Stu (Matthew Lillard) saying that Sidney has branded her boyfriend Billy (Skeet Ulrich) as Candyman in Scream (1996), Randy suggesting that Sidney’s roommate Hallie (Elise Neal) is Candyman’s daughter in Scream 2, and Kirby and Mindy being unable to decide whether 1992’s or 2021’s Candyman is better in Scream VI, Candyman is one of the most referenced movies in the Scream franchise, and for good reason. The Bernard Rose movie, which follows a grad student investigating a deadly urban legend in Chicago’s real-life public housing project Cabrini-Green, features a gorgeous Philip Glass score, an unforgettable performance from Tony Todd as the seductive supernatural killer, and withering satire about white students who view people of color as study subjects rather than human beings.
As for the minted classics that have been excluded from this list, honorable mentions shall go to 1922’s Nosferatu, 1931’s Frankenstein, 1960’s Psycho, 1973’s The Exorcist, 1974’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, 1978’s Halloween, 1984’s A Nightmare on Elm Street, and 1991’s The Silence of the Lambs, all of which are worthy choices for a scary movie night. But if you’ve been able to steer clear of Ghostface well enough to live to read the end of this article, you already know that.
Since you’re clearly an expert, sound off in the comments about some of your favorite horror movies referenced in the Scream franchise! Which of these picks is your favorite? And are there any omissions from the list that you think should be included?
