Dewey’s always been my favorite Scream character. My cat is named after him, after all! But there’s no denying that Dewey’s had more close calls than any other character in the franchise. He survived a knife to the back in the 1996 original and then made it through a significant stabbing in Scream 2. He held up pretty well in Scream 3 and 4, minus the bedpan bashing in 4, but at that point, the damage was already done. Dewey was the character who suffered the most brutal attacks and miraculously made it through alive.
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On top of that, we also have to consider that Dewey, Sidney (Neve Campbell), and Gale (Courteney Cox) made it through four Scream movies at this point. Could all three of them make it through another without lowering the stakes of the franchise? I’ve got a lot of feelings on the matter, so during a 45-minute spoiler conversation with directors Tyler Gillett and Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, and executive producer Chad Villella, I absolutely had to ask them, why did Dewey have to die? Villella began:
“It was so emotional and it was so gut-wrenching when we read it we're like, ‘Oh yes, this is the right choice. This is exactly what you need to feel right now at this point in the movie.’ And also, it would be the only thing that would bring Sidney back to Woodsboro, I think.”
Dewey is one of those characters who’s always willing to put his life on the line for others, and the team felt it was a necessary sacrifice in order for the franchise to move forward. Villella explained, “This is another sacrifice to the horror gods of a good man, that now the franchise can live on a little bit and the movie can be what it is.” No, it’s not an easy sacrifice to make, but it’s one with great value during the film and after it’s over as well. Villella noted:
“People are supposed to be sad about this. People are supposed to have a new reverence for this. And in the days after the movie came out, I think one of the biggest things and nicest things that people said was they immediately went back and watched the original just so you could see Dewey and the way he started and kicked off everything, and that just means a lot. He's a beloved character in movie history, one of the most beloved, and I think that exact reason is why it had to be Dewey in this one.”
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Gillett continued by comparing Dewey's death in the 2022 film to the iconic opening of the original Scream:
“It's not lost on us that him being a survivor of so much brutality that for the movie to show the audience that it was playing for keeps and that there's no safety net under what you think the movie is going to be -- which to us is honestly one of the most important things to achieve with a Scream movie, is that it is going to make you experience some really difficult things. I think that we all forget that that is what was so compelling about the opening of the first movie, that it hurts and you don't like that feeling and that it, at the same time, completely has you hooked in. And for us, we had a similar feeling reading that scene and then certainly shooting it. It was like, ‘Oh, this is a big deal.’ And it's going to change the emotionality of the movie in a way that hopefully while, yeah, it's super difficult, it's also gonna make everyone invest because they want the f*cking killers to get their comeuppance and they cannot wait for that to happen.”
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Gillett recalled that during preview screenings, they often heard about how Dewey’s death kicks the film into a new gear. Yes, the movie is about following the who-done-it all the way through, “but it's also about a real justice in that moment.” How Dewey’s death changes the shape and feel of the story going forward was an extremely important element of the film to Gillett and the team.
Bettinelli-Olpin also explained how they were able to reflect Arquette’s overall approach to the character in his send-off:
“David had talked about Dewey thinking of himself as Clint Eastwood, and obviously we know Dewey is not Clint Eastwood. But that's what he brought to the character, is that he wanted to be that guy. And so, there was something that we really tried to put into his death scene where you kind of finally give him that moment of like, ‘Here he is, he's doing the high noon hero's walk. He's gonna do the thing. He's gonna achieve it,’ and kind of let him go out like a hero in a way that is — deserved isn't the right word, but you know what I mean. Send him out in a funeral pyre kind of thing, like really go for it.”
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Looking for more Scream spoiler talk from Bettinelli-Olpin, Gillett and Villella? Stay tuned because we’ll have the full 45-minute conversation for you tomorrow!