The New 'Scream's Many Connections To 'Halloween'

This article contains spoilers for Scream (2022).

It’s no secret that John Carpenter’s Halloween was a significant influence when creator Kevin Williamson and director Wes Craven set out to make the first film about a masked killer who looks like a melting candle.

After all, a movie as meta as Scream couldn’t possibly omit a homage or ten to one of horror’s most famous and successful masked killer stalker-slasher franchises in the genre’s history. From original Scream co-killer Billy Loomis who shares his surname with Michael Myers’ psychiatrist Dr. Samuel “Sam” Loomis, to Sidney Prescott becoming the new Jamie Lee Curtis/Final Girl, to Randy and friends literally watching Halloween during the third act of the 1996 movie — the entire Ghostface franchise and especially the first installment is peppered with references to Carpenter’s slasher saga. 

It is with absolute delight, then, to see some of the big plot points in the fifth and new Scream movie echo those found in its counter Halloween entry. Especially since the new Scream went back to its roots in many ways.

First up, we have a new addition to our Final Girls team made up of Sidney, Gale Weathers, and now newly survivor Sam Carpenter-Loomis — the daughter of OG killer Billy Loomis. What a freaking twist! Good job, everybody. Throughout the film, Sam is haunted by her serial killer dad’s menacing presence in her, well, genetics, we guess. She’s constantly seeing visions of him, causing us to rejoice at the return of the very dead Billy, even though Skeet Ulrich’s de-aging CG makes it look like his eyes have somehow grown closer together.

Sam kept her real dad’s identity a secret from her younger half-sister Tara Carpenter because, at the heart of it, Sam was scared that she would turn out to be just like her dad — a relatable fear and also holy sh*t that is very much what’s going on with Jamie Lloyd in Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers. To quickly refresh everyone’s memory, little Jamie was the main girl Michael was stalking in Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers because Jamie was Laurie Strode’s biological daughter, making her Michael’s niece. When Michael found that out thanks to a couple of nurses who just couldn’t keep their mouths shut in the back of an ambulance, he simply had to murder absolutely everyone to go and find his niece so he could kill her, too, because the man literally knows nothing else. 

But see, the big twist at the end of Halloween 4 is that, after experiencing the trauma of escaping Michael and watching him get shot to death (or so she thought), darling little Jamie ends up stabbing her foster mother with a pair of scissors, mirroring how Michael killed his sister Judith.

In Halloween 5, Jamie is now mute from all the trauma and has some sort of psychic link to Michael. Because they’re related, you see. Only Jamie doesn’t want to be a vicious killer like her Uncle, and she spends the entire film trying to stop him from killing everyone around her. All with the help of her friend at the clinic — little Billy Hill. 

And while our new Scream girl Sam battles her daddy demons because, like Jamie, she doesn’t want to be like her murderous blood relative, it is Dad Billy (in a vision) who helps her defeat the killer in the end. How marvelously bonkers.

Also, Halloween 5 sees us return to the original Myers house for the very first time … just like we return to Stu’s/the original murder house in the new Scream movie.

Also also, Michael kills all the cops at the end of Halloween 5. Like, every single one of them. A sheer massacre. So this writer wasn’t all that surprised to see the new Scream spare no cop, none at all.

Not even former ones.

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Top Image: Paramount Pictures/Trancas International