The Directors of SCREAM Open Up About That Shocking Death in the Movie

I enjoyed the latest Scream movie! I thought it was great, and it’s exactly the direction that franchise needed to go. While it was easy to figure out who the killers were early on in the film, it was still a fun ride! That ride also included a shocking death scene that was rough for a lot of fans.

If you haven’t seen the movie yet, you might want to skip this because the directors of the film, Tyler Gillett and Matt Bettinelli, a.k.a. Radio Silence, open up about this character’s brutal demise.

As you know, Dewey has survived attacks from the murderous Ghostface over the course of four films. He’s been stabbed multiple times and ended up with permanent nerve damage, and he just kept on living! That is until this latest film where he was finally murdered by Ghostface, and it took two knives to do him in. It was just time for a legacy character to bite the dust, you know, to up the stakes.

During an interview with The Wrap, Gillett talked about killing Dewey off, saying:

"I think we all knew that we were going to do what we had to do. I just think that it was that feeling of, you're Wile E. Coyote-ing towards the edge of the cliff and then you start backing up. As you start to commit to a choice that has that much gravity, I think it's natural to want to gut check yourself and go, fuck, is this the right thing? I think that we all knew in our hearts though that it was, for so many reasons, right. I feel like the stakes of the movie depend so greatly on us being able to express that there isn't really a safe place to hide in our film.

"It's what I think that people forget that that's how the first movie felt. And it's one of the reasons why it's so great and so compelling, is that opening [Drew Barrymore] scene, it strips you of every expectation. And I think for us, obviously 25 years later in [the] fifth movie in a franchise that has done so much subverting of expectations, the one thing that it's never really done is go for it with a legacy cast member and specifically Dewey who is historically unkillable. And I think the challenge for us was to not treat it in a way that felt mean or cruel though obviously it's very, very brutal. I think for us we wanted to make it as iconic and sort of heroic as that character is, the two knives. The idea that the only way that you could possibly kill Dewey is to get him with two knives."

Before Dewey is killed off, he does get to reunite with Gale Weathers (Courtney Cox) one last time, which was a sweet moment under intense circumstances. When talking about the romance of that scene Gillett said:

"The thread of Gale in that scene ... makes it feel a little bit romantic. And there's maybe a little bit of hope for him at the end when he looks at the phone and he sees that she's calling. All of these ingredients ... make it feel like it is emotionally complicated and not just, this sort of quick brutal kill.

"And even Ghostface saying, 'It's an honor.' The killer in that moment recognizes the gravity of what the movie is doing and what they're doing. And ultimately on a meta level, what they are doing for the [in-universe 'Stab'] movie that will be made based on the events of this movie, there were a lot of things sort of at work, but I think we felt a real reverence for what that had to be. And I mean, look, it's one of the bigger risks of the movie, but we also knew it had to happen. The movie after that happens is so based in the consequence of his death that we just had to be willing to go there."

What did you all think of Dewey’s death and the way it was handled?