WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Scream, now playing in theaters.
In the Scream franchise, there have been many tragic deaths that can admittedly be blamed on Billy and Stu, as well as all the other Ghostface copycats who were influenced by their Woodsboro murders. Whether it’s a sick obsession with horror movies or family legacies passed down with vendettas of revenge, these slashers have a plethora of reasons for their sins. However, in the Scream “requel,” the property’s most heartbreaking death is all due to a fatal Woodsboro flaw that’s existed for decades.
This has to do with the lack of security in town, despite the obvious signs and killing sprees that take place time and time again. In the early Scream movies, it was more or less David Arquette’s Deputy Dewey doing the job on his own, investigating and then putting his life on the line in the field by himself. It’s why he had nine slashes prior to this film and almost died on multiple occasions.
Apart from Judy Hicks, no other cops were really invested in making the rounds, nor did curfews bring out the patrols en masse to turn the town into a military zone. One would think once the copycats returned, law enforcement would have policies, procedures and preventative measures in place. However, as the new movie showed, this hasn’t happened — not even when kids are throwing parties in town.
Sadly, this lackadaisical mentality led to a brutal fatality involving a franchise mainstay after Tara ended up in hospital. She was Scream‘s opening target but somehow ended up alive. When Sheriff Judy and Wes were coincidentally killed late, Dewey and Tara’s sister, Sam, went to Judy’s home, trying to piece together clues. However, the one cop stationed outside Tara’s room ended up at the scene of the crime, leaving Sam pissed that Tara was left alone.
As a result, Sam, her boyfriend Richie and Dewey raced to the hospital, which was magically empty. As such, Ghostface attacked them, and the fracas ended with the killer gutting Dewey. Seriously, though, one has to wonder why the cop would leave his station to come to an active crime scene where other cops are already present. In addition, there should have been more than one cop at the hospital, which also somehow didn’t have security of its own.
It’s pretty odd given Woodsboro’s history and also because Tara was marked for death. This left fans curious as to why the workforce was so thin, why emergency plans weren’t put into play for residents, and why a carefree cop decided to abandon his post. What made it even more crushing was how the altruistic Dewey retired from his sheriff’s job outside of Woodsboro, only to come back home and end up dying due to an inept policing system that totally ignored Dewey’s philosophy of proactivity.
To see how Woodsboro’s law enforcement botch the job, Scream is playing in theaters now.
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