Scream 3

"The most terrifying scream is always the last."

2000 1h 56m EN

😐

6.0

MID

★6.0TMDB · 4,205

HorrorMystery

Synopsis

Spoiler shield

As bodies begin dropping around the Hollywood set of STAB 3, the third film based on the gruesome Woodsboro killings, Sidney and other survivors are once again terrorized by another Ghostface killer.

“The most terrifying scream is always the last.”

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Cast

Neve Campbell
Sidney Prescott
David Arquette
Dewey Riley
Courteney Cox
Gale Weathers
Parker Posey
Jennifer Jolie
Patrick Dempsey
Mark Kincaid
Scott Foley
Roman Bridger
Matt Keeslar
Tom Prinze
Jenny McCarthy
Sarah Darling

Credits

Behind the camera

Director: Wes Craven
Writers: Ehren Kruger, Robert Consing
Languages: English
Countries: United States of America

Want more? Switch to Cinephile mode in the header for DP, composer, budget, box office, production companies, keywords, and release history.

Did you know?

Fun facts 🍿

1 / 8

MONEY

Did you know

Made its money back 4.0× over at the box office.

MoodPlayr · trivia#01

2 / 8

ERA

Did you know

26 years old — old enough to be someone's favourite childhood film.

MoodPlayr · trivia#02

3 / 8

CINEMA

Did you know

Part of the "Scream Collection" — so the characters or world continue elsewhere.

MoodPlayr · trivia#03

4 / 8

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Directed by Wes Craven, shot by Peter Deming. Note their partnership — DPs and directors often return to each other across a career.

MoodPlayr · trivia#04

5 / 8

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Original score by Marco Beltrami. Worth a dedicated listen after — most great films lose half their impact without the score.

MoodPlayr · trivia#05

6 / 8

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Editor Patrick Lussier shaped the rhythm. On an edit-heavy film, the editor does more to control your pulse than the director.

MoodPlayr · trivia#06

7 / 8

CAST

Did you know

Neve Campbell and David Arquette and Courteney Cox carry the top of the cast.

MoodPlayr · trivia#07

8 / 8

FACT

Did you know

Marketing tagline: "The most terrifying scream is always the last.".

MoodPlayr · trivia#08

Cinephile deep dive

The take

Wes Craven directs. Peter Deming behind the camera. Marco Beltrami scores. Patrick Lussier cuts. Made its budget back several times over at the box office. Produced in United States of America. Dialogue in English.

Trivia

Things worth knowing

1Made its money back 4.0× over at the box office.
226 years old — old enough to be someone's favourite childhood film.
3Part of the "Scream Collection" — so the characters or world continue elsewhere.
4Directed by Wes Craven, shot by Peter Deming. Note their partnership — DPs and directors often return to each other across a career.
5Original score by Marco Beltrami. Worth a dedicated listen after — most great films lose half their impact without the score.
6Editor Patrick Lussier shaped the rhythm. On an edit-heavy film, the editor does more to control your pulse than the director.
7Neve Campbell and David Arquette and Courteney Cox carry the top of the cast.
8Marketing tagline: "The most terrifying scream is always the last.".
9IMDB entry: tt0134084 — still the authoritative cross-reference for credits and trivia.
10The top-rated still from this film on TMDB has multiple community votes — a signal the frame composition stuck with viewers.
11Classified under 14 themes, including "mask", "california", "isolation", "movie business".

The technical file

Cinematography: Peter Deming
Original score: Marco Beltrami
Editing: Patrick Lussier
Production design: Bruce Alan Miller
Costume design: Abigail Murray
Makeup / hair: Lesa Nielsen-Duff
VFX supervisor: Gene Warren Jr.
Sound: Todd Toon
Stunt coordinator: Rick Avery
Runtime: 116 min · 1h 56m
Aspect ratio (typical): 1.37:1 (Academy)
Status: Released
Budget: $40,000,000
Box office: $161,838,076
Return: 405% of budget
Original language: EN
Certification (US): R
IMDB: Scream 3 (2000)

Part of

Scream Collection

An American slasher series set largely around the fictional small town of Woodsboro, California, in which various groups of teens become the target of a masked killer, soon to be known nationwide as “Ghostface".

Also by

Wes Craven

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Trailers & featurettes

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Community reviews

What people are saying

John Chard2015-07-19
★ 7/10
Oh the irony of it all... After surviving the second wave of ghostface killings, Sidney Prescott has retired to the mountains to live in peace and work as a phone call therapist. Sadly for her she is about to be dragged back into the nightmare because the production of Stab 3 is rocked by murder and the killer is leaving pictures of Sidney's dead mother at the crime scenes. I have to admit that I once never gave this film much love, I loved the first two to such a degree that I felt this third and final instalment was way off being a fitting closure to what was at the time a trilogy. Yet as time has wore on I have really grown fond of the film, Parker Posey no longer annoys the hell out of me, the once jarring itch of watching the makers kill off a fave character of mine in the opening sequence is something I now view as a masterstroke, and the twisty ending that was once an irksome pest has moved on to be the perfect "trilogy" closure. Scream 3 has its tongue firmly in its cheek, it's aware of its number and it's aware of its formulaic root, so in spite of treading familiar ground (I mean come on gang, have you not learnt nothing from your previous experiences), the returning characters still have our undivided attention. While the transporting of the story to Hollywood, with its movie within a movie structure, is fresh and adds a new dimension to proceedings. New additions to the scary fun are Patrick Dempsey, Emily Mortimer, Lance Henriksen and the afore mentioned Parker Posey, and all of them add greatly to the mysterious plot unfolding. The death quotient is still high, and the Wes Craven school of whodunitry is well and truly open, and I personally feel that this one is easily the funniest film of the three, witness Jay & Silent Bob turning up, a Carrie Fisher sequence that once heard will never be forgotten, and a video appearance by passed on geek god Randy Meeks. Scream 3 closes the "trilogy" just fine, it's got bags of energy and a glint in its eye, now if only I could get a copy of the uncompleted Stab 3 off the internet - and if only there wasn't to be a part 4 further down the line... 7/10
CinemaSerf2023-02-14
★ 5/10
Not even a brief cameo from "Princess Leia" herself - passing lively comment on George Lucas's casting techniques, can save this entirely derivative trequel. Amidst the filming of "Stab 3", people start to drop like flies almost exactly as they might following script of this soon to be completed masterpiece. The new slasher starts as he/she/it means to go on, by dispatching poor old "Cotton" (Liev Schreiber) and his girlfriend before turning attention to the old guard of "Sidney" (Neve Prescott), Courteney Cox ("Gale") - and their movie-star doppelgängers whilst the indomitable "Dewey" (David Arquette) laudably, but ineffectively, keeps a look out as the corpses pile up. This is a really poor rehash of the original with almost exactly the same plot with the same red herrings, screeching hysteria and audio-induced jump-points. Although the structure of the story is marginally different, the ending is just as ridiculously left field and reminded me of something Agatha Christie might have drafted before she tossed it on the fire. This gift has stopped giving for Wes Craven, time to stop!
Nathan2023-03-08
★ 4/10
Scream 3’s lackluster screenplay and unimaginative kills leave a film that is a bore to watch. The meta-narrative of trilogies throughout the film does not make up for how abysmal the plot was. This film creates so much lore for the past movies seemingly out of the blue, muddling up the continuity for shock value. It added very little to this film and felt forced. The entire plot point of Sidney’s mother being a former Hollywood actress was pretty lame, especially with the added plot point of her being sexually assaulted by a movie producer. It may be personal taste, but I absolutely despise when films add that plot point, as it feels incredibly hypocritical since it is something that genuinely happens to an industry, they are involved in. The love triangle between Gale, Dewey, and the Gale actress was pretty dumb and felt undeserved, as we have not seen Gale and Dewey actually together in any of the films. In horror films, you can have a good movie with a terrible plot as long as the kills are great. Unfortunately, Scream 3 continues the trend of having boring kills with no imagination. There has been only one truly unique kill throughout the entire franchise, and the rest are unbloody stab kills. I understand the meta being about stabbing with a knife, as the in-film movie is called Stab, but please add some gore to it. There is nothing, no blood squirts or body horror, and it caused the entire movie to be boring. Our performances were exactly how I would describe Scream 2, with both Neve Campbell and Courtney Cox being the standouts and David Arquette being average at best. All of the new characters were pretty uninteresting, all of the actors in the film were annoying, and the movie producers felt generic. The direction of this film felt pretty uninspired. I am not sure if Wes Craven was forced to make this movie by the studio, but nothing about it felt unique and creative. It felt like he was phoning it in for a paycheck. Overall, there were not a lot of redeeming qualities for this film, and it left me feeling unfulfilled as the final credits rolled. Hoping Scream IV has more in store for me than this lackluster film. Score: 45% Verdict: Poor