[Editorial] Sins of the Mother: Generational Sin in the Scream Franchise

When the Scream franchise begins, we’re introduced to Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell), the final girl who carries the series against her slasher Ghostface. It’s hardly been a year since the brutal murder of her mother, and she understandably has trouble moving past this as she witnessed the murder and testified in the court case against Maureen Prescott’s (Lynn McRee) accused killer, Cotton Weary (Liev Schreiber). Still, Sidney finds herself caught up in her mother’s murky legacy of infidelity, which has major repercussions in a small town like Woodsboro. Despite having no knowledge of Maureen’s past, upon her death, Sidney becomes the surrogate, constantly on trial for the “sins” of her mother.

Sidney chooses not to believe the rumors about her mother’s infidelity, overhearing two of her classmates gossiping in the bathroom, baselessly speculating that Sidney will end up just like her. Even when Tatum (Rose McGowan), her best friend, tries to get Sidney to accept the reality of who Maureen was, Sidney pushes back. Later, Sidney tells her boyfriend Billy (Skeet Ulrich), “I can’t keep lying to myself about who my mom was. I’m just really scared I’m gonna turn out just like her, ya know? Like the bad seed or something.” In Sidney’s two year relationship with Billy, they never had sex, and he points out multiple times that since her mom died, Sidney is hesitant to do anything sexual with him. Even though Sidney outwardly rejects the rumors about her mother, internally she’s trying to avoid falling into the same cycle, as if having sex will set her down a predetermined path for her life. 

Additionally, Sidney’s reluctance to believe the painful truth about her mother lands Maureen’s former lover Cotton Weary in prison after she testified that he killed her mother and was lying about having an affair with her. In Sidney’s attempt to distance herself from the weight of her mother’s sins, she sends an innocent man to death row, something that’s also painful for her to admit to. As the film progresses, it seems as though the sins of her mother are passed along to her, an unspoken birthright. In Abrahamic religious traditions, it’s believed that sin was introduced to the world by Eve, the first woman, and that since she’s the mother of all people, everyone has inherited her sinful nature. Some groups particularly cast this blame onto women as a whole, since Eve ate the forbidden fruit first and then convinced Adam to do so as well. As a result, everyone must pay for their sins, the Bible in particular stating that “the wages of sin is death.”

Maureen Prescott did “pay” for her sins, her penance brutally doled out by Billy and Stu. It’s not enough, as Billy and Stu (Matthew Lillard) begin projecting Maureen’s transgressions onto Sidney despite her having no involvement in or knowledge of her mother’s affairs. When she and Billy have sex at Stu’s house party, Billy cruelly makes sure it’s past midnight the one year anniversary of Maureen’s death as if to drive his point home. Billy reveals that his mom left because of the affair Sidney’s mother was having with Billy’s father, the driving factor for his obsession with revenge. This bleeds into Scream 2 (1997) when it’s revealed that the second iteration of Ghostface is Sidney’s college friend Mickey (Timothy Olyphant)–and Billy’s mom (Laurie Metcalf), seeking what she views as a righteous vengeance for the death of her son and dissolution of her family which she blames Sidney for, putting the weight of Maureen Prescott’s sins on her daughter once again.

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Ghostface continues to be Sidney’s proverbial cross to bear in Scream 3 (2000), as the set of the latest movie of the in-universe “Stab” franchise, based on Gale Weathers’ tell-all about the events of the first film, is terrorized by Ghostface in an attempt to lure Sidney out of reclusion. Roman, the director of “Stab 3” is the singular Ghostface in this film. He’s also Sidney’s half-brother by her mother. He reveals to Sidney that Hollywood producer John Milton raped Maureen early into her aspiring film career, resulting in a pregnancy. She gave up Roman for adoption and wasn’t interested in reuniting with him when he’d found her years earlier. This rejection led Roman to finding evidence of Maureen’s infidelity, presenting Billy with footage of Sidney’s mother and Billy’s father leaving a motel room together. Once again, despite having no knowledge of or involvement in any of it, Sidney still becomes the stand-in for Maureen simply because she’s her daughter, and that alone seems to be sin enough to justify the years of death and terror she’s had to endure. 

The various Ghostfaces throughout the Scream franchise project Maureen’s actions onto Sidney. They similarly present to her that other people did bad things because of her mother, denying any agency they themselves may have had. While in the Scream universe, John Milton is a producer, it’s also the name of the British poet who wrote Paradise Lost, an epic poem which dramatizes the biblical fall of mankind into sin. Milton’s work expands on Eve, her characterization in his poem influencing many Christians’ views on the woman who is only present for a small portion of the Bible. It’s implied in the poem that Adam is more willing to sin due to his physical attraction toward Eve, something she cannot help. As in Christian tradition, mankind must grapple with sin despite having no involvement in the original sin, for decades Sidney must bear the brunt of her mother’s legacy. 

The theme of generational sin also drives Scream 5 (2022). We’re introduced to Sam Carpenter, who reluctantly returns to Woodsboro after her sister Tara is attacked by the latest iteration of Ghostface. The film reveals that Billy Loomis is Sam’s biological father, and for years, she’s struggled with the fear that the evil in him will somehow manifest in her, that it’s something she inherited. Most telling is that Sam’s hallucinations of Billy are almost exclusively when she’s looking in mirrors, revealing that she thinks the sins of her father are reflected in herself. 

Her frequent hallucinations of her dead father throughout the film deeply trouble her and are exploited by the film’s Ghostface duo Ritchie and Amber, crazed and frustrated fans of the “Stab” franchise who think bringing Billy Loomis’ daughter into the fray would revitalize the films they claim to love so much. Sam eventually embraces the supposed genetic homicidal side of herself so she can save Tara and her friends, quipping “Don’t mess with a serial killer’s daughter.” A stark contrast to Sidney, who’s spent the Scream films distancing herself from her mother’s actions and Ghostface as a whole, Sam embraces her legacy, perhaps signaling a new direction of the revived franchise.

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