Although they belong to different horror franchises, Scream 3 connects to Halloween H20: 20 Years Later, thanks to a particular location in both movies. There are thematic similarities between Scream 3 and Halloween H20 — for example, they both explore the lives of women (Sidney Prescott and Laurie Strode, respectively) who’ve escaped the clutches of serial killers. There’s a metatextual connection too: the mansion in Scream 3 is the same filming location as the school in Halloween H20. Wes Craven’s Scream franchise is notoriously meta about the slasher sub-genre of horror, so there are major in-universe implications by tying it to Steve Miner’s classic Halloween.
Scream revitalized the slasher flick by mocking and subverting well-established horror tropes, going so far as to include a scene from the 1978 film Halloween. Scream character Randy Meeks explains the rules of how to survive a horror movie based on the predictability of Laurie Strode’s struggle against Michael Myers, laying the foundations for the critique. However, Halloween H20 pushes back by including a scene from Scream 2, which casts the self-aware horror in the same light as any other slasher and makes the audience question the base reality of the films. In another crossover, 2000’s Scream 3 Sidney Prescott lives in seclusion in the same mansion that serves as the school where Laurie Strode hides out as a teacher in 1998’s Halloween H20.
Scream 3 and Halloween H20 do share a universe, but paradoxically. Most meta-narratives are one-way, such as the inclusion of the fictional Stab series within the Scream series as a commentary on Scream itself. But how can Halloween be in Scream but also show that Scream exists as a movie in the Halloween universe? Professional nods from screenplay writers and directors aside, the overlap between Halloween H20 and Scream 3 proves that these two movie franchises not only exist as fiction in each other’s universes but also influence each other.
This is evident in the way each slasher universe presents the other: simply, as horror movies. It is not unordinary for venues like the Paramount Estate mansion to be used as a filming location and so it’s not impossible that the mansion (or a replica) exists both in the Scream and Halloween H20 universes as a movie set for each film. An example of one influencing the other happens in Halloween H20 when Michael stalks Laurie down a corridor of the school: the score from Scream plays as she frantically escapes because Laurie’s point of reference for horror is Scream.
These films’ social commentary isn’t restricted to their own universes, either: Scream 3, in keeping with its meta-narrative, also worked as a scathing indictment of Hollywood using its movie-within-a-movie trope. In general, the Scream franchise is grounded in concepts of intertextuality — movies and books line shelves in the backgrounds of scenes, news and network shows play idly on televisions, and characters quote lines from movies that the audience may have seen. The relationship between the Scream and Halloween franchises makes this point more blatant and (of course) more meta, but it doesn’t make it any less interesting. While the Scream franchise ultimately fell victim to its own tropes, with another installment of Scream (a reboot titled Scream) with a release date in 2022, it’ll be interesting to see what the self-aware horror has to say about the current times.
Key Release Dates
Scream (2022)
Release Date:2022-01-14
