Gale Weathers’ Ghostface Call is One of 2023’s Best Scenes
Chad Collins
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Scream VI is goofy. I seamlessly shift from loving it to conceding it’s the weakest in the series. The precariousness of my perspective has only been augmented in recent weeks, with the news that Spyglass fired star Melissa Barrera, a move that imploded the franchise as it stands. Presently, Spyglass is reportedly looking to reboot the franchise, though it’s arguably too little, too late.
It must be noted that Barrera is not the preeminent casualty of the ongoing 2023 Israel–Gaza war, a note I’d urge Scream stan accounts on Twitter to consider. The tragedy extends far beyond a slasher series. With that consideration in mind, it seems that Scream VI is the last entry in the legacy series that started back in 1996 with Wes Craven’s original. Resultantly, Scream VI warrants recontextualization, and within the even broader framework of the 2023 horror scene, it did at least one thing remarkably well—it gave Courteney Cox’s Gale Weathers a Ghostface call.
I’ve written before that Gale Weathers has been the series’ secret weapon. Her arc, and Cox’s characterization, added depth to what could easily have regressed into a caricature of the slasher players of yore. She’s two steps forward, one step back, an ambitious, uncompromising supporting player other series would have killed off straight away. Scream, conversely, continued to develop her cunning and, yes, heart, going so far as to all but concede Scream 3 to her. While principally on account of scheduling constraints with star Neve Campbell, Scream 3 remains the Gale Weathers show, gamely proving that the franchise could sustain itself in the absence of perennial final girl Sidney Prescott.
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With Scream VI, despite the derisive origins (that is, the studio refusing to meet Campbell in her salary negotiations), Cox and Ghostface voice actor Roger Jackson have become the only series mainstays to appear in every entry. In the case of Gale Weathers, that prominence hasn’t been perfect. Scream VI, not to belabor a point I’ve made a dozen times before, doesn’t know what to do with its legacy players. Hayden Panettiere’s Kirby Reed has a distractingly absurd reintroduction to the Ghostface fray, and in the case of Weathers especially, writers James Vanderbilt and Guy Busick actively undermine the growth they cultivated for her.
In Scream (2022), David Arquette’s Dewey finally met his end. It was last year’s most tragic horror death, and despite the disappointment innate in Campbell not returning (even if the series had no tenable reason to bring her character back), Scream VI had an opportunity to finally, finally give Gale Weathers a winning moment of her own. And they did. Mostly.
Gale Weathers, working in New York City, ingratiates herself into the latest string of Ghostface killings, assisting the new Core Four (ugh) in a protracted and conventional procedural yarn. Weathers has access to evidence both the local police and FBI lack, and in a standout moment, solidifies the entry’s found family roots. Sure, she’s ostensibly villainous at the start, having written the exact book she promised not to as Scream (2022) came to an end. But as a passer of the final girl torch, her moments tug at the heartstrings and convincingly make the case that, six movies in, there’s life left yet in the stories that started almost 30 years ago.
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Which, of course, says nothing of Gale’s Ghostface call, a sequence prominently featured in Scream VI’s marketing leading up to its release. Despite appearing in every entry, Gale Weathers never actually had a phone call with Ghostface. It’s iconographic of the series, yet one of its three main players somehow evaded Jackson’s landline menace for nearly three decades. She finally got one, and it was as sensational as fans would have hoped for.
It starts off promising enough, if a little predictably. As Kirby inexplicably boots Gale from the ongoing investigation (Kirby Reed is a terrible, terrible FBI agent, something Scream VI refuses to acknowledge), the remaining players hatch a haphazard plan to corral and capture the killer in Central Park (Montreal). The killer calls, privy to their plan, and their location is traced back to the Upper West Side. Why would Ghostface be there? Because Gale lives there, of course!
Gale’s new boyfriend, Brooks (Thomas Cadrot) answers the phone while Gale sits on her computer in a gorgeous (if non-descript) high-rise. “Who is it?” She asks. “He says it’s the killer.” The subsequent call is a firecracker of tight meta-scripting and perverse suspense. Obscured in the background, Ghostface appears and kills Brooks (unbeknownst to Gale), as the two trade jabs at franchise history and their role therein.
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Gale pointedly acknowledges that this new iteration is, like, the tenth guy to try this, and “spoiler,” it never works out. Ghostface, packing some cantankerous lore of his own, taunts Gale for never having had the chance to be the lead. This Ghostface has seen Scream 4. For three minutes, it’s tit-for-tat, with Ghostface’s mention of Dewey’s death really setting Gale off. Then Brooks’ body is thrown through a built-in, sending Gale into fight-or-flight mode as she bashes Ghostface with a skillet, flees outside, and successfully barricades herself in the bedroom.
Wisely, Gale doesn’t let her guard down. Instead, she unlocks her gun safe, removes what’s within, and fires off a few rounds through the door without warning. Maybe she got Ghostface. Maybe she didn’t. Doesn’t matter. Ghostface calls back and tries to screw with her, but Gale doesn’t care. She leaves the room to track Ghostface down. In one of the franchise’s funniest moments, Gale does what too few Scream characters have considered doing before. “Can you hold, please”? She asks. “Wha,” Ghostface says, the final consonant cut off as Gale hangs up and calls Ghostface back, revealing their location in a closet behind her. She remembers the safety and fires off a few more rounds.
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Of course, Scream VI is still beholden to the longstanding rules of the franchise, so Gale’s gunshots are ineffective. Ghostface bursts out, and while Gale puts up a remarkable fight, she’s still stabbed and left for dead as Ghostface flees out the door. Her final line doesn’t make a great deal of sense—“Tell Sidney he never got me”—because, well, he did kind of get her. But the scene writ large was a welcome diversion in an enterprise buckling under the weight of legacy expectations.
Collectively, Gale’s chase, beyond being one of 2023’s standout horror moments, was the moment in Scream VI that felt the most like Scream. It was funny, layered, and gave a legacy player something of note to do. It was five movies worth of Gale Weathers getting a call, interrogating the legacy of the franchise, and her role in it, in spectacular, gory fashion. Upon release, fans reasonably expected a Scream 7 that would, in some capacity, end Gale’s arc more definitively. Since that’s not liable to happen, it’s a bittersweet yet no less meaningful note to end on. Ghostface didn’t kill her. He tried, but he failed. I mean, this is Gale Weathers after all. It’s going to take more than a silly little guy in a mask to end decades of iconic legacy. Plus, just think about what this is going to do for her book sales!
Categorized:Editorials
