20 best badass women of horror movies
2. Sidney Prescott (Scream)
Sidney Prescott, like so many women on this list and beyond, didn’t ask for any of this. She didn’t ask for her mother’s death, or for the terrifying phone calls that began one year later. Neither did she ask to be caught up with a pair of men who eventually showed themselves to be little more than inhuman monsters.
But just because life throws some truly gut-wrenching nastiness at you is not an automatic pass to fall into lethargy and despair. Regardless of whether or not you think it’s fair, oftentimes the world doesn’t care. Plus, if Sidney (played by Neve Campbell) had simply laid down and waited for the Ghostface murderer to get her, Scream would have been a much, much shorter movie.
Still, it’s fair to gather up at least a little sympathy for Sidney. Her mother, Maureen, was brutally murdered. Only a year later, she begins to receive threatening phone calls from a creepy murderer. After a long series of false leads and innocent suspects, Sidney eventually discovers that the killer is… well, a pair of killers. Specifically, they are her boyfriend Billy Loomis and his friend Stu Macher.
What’s Billy’s deal? He’s apparently mad because his father had an affair with the deceased Maureen, which led to Billy’s mother leaving the family. This somehow means that he has to kill Sidney (besides a whole bunch of other people).
As rightfully horrified as Sidney is, she takes action. With some help from local reporter Gale Weathers, Sidney kills both Stu and Billy, therefore surviving Scream and making sure that Neve Campbell could show up in three more Scream franchise films.