Scream 3: Parker Posey’s Jennifer Is the Franchise’s Most Underrated Character

Forget “What’s your favorite scary movie?” Forget “I’ll be right back.” The defining line of the Scream franchise in this humble writer’s opinion is the one that Jennifer Jolie delivers as she gets stabbed by Ghostface: “You can’t kill me!” she shouts in disbelief. “I’m the killer in Stab 3! I’m the killer!”

Yes, that line does show up in Scream 3, easily the least loved entry in the series. Which might be why you don’t remember it. Indeed, while Scream 3 brought back director Wes Craven, it replaced screenwriter Kevin Williamson, whose snappy and self-aware dialogue was central to the first two movies’ success, with Arlington Road writer Ehren Kruger. For some, Scream 3 went on to push the metatextual elements too far, as it takes place on the set of the movie-within-a-movie Stab 3, and ups the humor to the point where Jay and Silent Bob make a cameo.

But while Scream 3 struggles to distinguish itself under all of the navel-gazing, arrogant actor Jennifer Jolie works every time thanks to a pitch-perfect performance from Parker Posey.

Screaming With Laughter

Right after the murder of Cotten Weary (Liev Schreiber) in the movie’s opening, muckraking reporter Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox) does what she does best and sneaks onto the set of Stab 3. Where most people would be thrown by seeing the uncanny reproduction of Woodsboro, her former hometown, on the movie’s set, Gale is unphased. Even the sudden emergence of a slim, slightly manic woman in a garish green suit imitating her media persona doesn’t throw gale. Although it does annoy her.

“I know we’ve never met and I don’t mind you never returning my calls, but after two films I feel like I am in your mind,” gushes Jennifer, as if she’s a wide-eyed ingenue meeting her hero. “That would explain my constant headaches,” quips Gale, a cut that gets Jennifer to change her approach. Instead of kissing up to Gale Weathers, Jennifer decides to be Gale Weathers.

She takes a beat to change her composure and then says, “You know, I’m sorry things didn’t work out on 60 Minutes II, but Total Entertainment, that’s a pretty good fallback.” In an instant, we clock who Jennifer really is, as well as how far Gale has fallen from stabbing at serious journalism and returning to tabloid dreck.

Jennifer isn’t the only character to play someone we know from the Scream movies either. Scream 3 also features Emily Mortimer as a Sidney Prescott stand-in and Matt Keeslar as a pseudo-Dewey. But Jennifer is the only one who feels like she’s doing to the franchise what Scream did to ’80s slashers. Posey is at once breaking down and celebrating the basic tropes and formulas that came before her arrival. As she does so often working with Christopher Guest, the real actor is interrogating the type of character represented by Gale Weathers, and Posey then delivers a precise send-up.

Posey plays Jennifer as a canny careerist, someone who sees all the angles and knows how to play them to her advantage, no matter who gets hurt in the process. This is most obvious in her relationship with Dewey (David Arquette), who has been hired as a consultant by the Stab producers (which include Roger Corman, in one of the movie’s many larger genre nods).

When the sight of Dewey forces Gale to lose composure for the briefest of moments, Jennifer pounces. She allows herself a slight strut as she goes up to Dewey’s side and takes his arm. In contrast to Dewey’s expression of guilt and embarrassment, Jennifer gets increasingly melodramatic as she describes what she’s learned about Gale from him, even about “that lost, lonely little girl inside.”

Posey’s performance is, of course, fully comedic. Jennifer never seems believably scared, not even right before she’s literally stabbed to death by a killer. But in playing the comedy, Posey plays the strongest aspect of Scream 3, downplaying the film’s lackluster horror and dramatic beats.

Screaming into the Mirror

Jennifer may spend all of Scream 3 paired with Gale Weathers but she doesn’t truly meet her match until halfway through the movie. When she and Gale investigate the acting history of Sidney’s late mother Maureen Prescott, Jennifer comes face to face with a casting director named Bianca Burnette, who looks just like Carrie Fisher. That is because she is, of course, played by Carrie Fisher.

This being Scream 3, Gale and Jennifer recognize Bianca as Fisher and start to ask her about it, which Bianca shuts down with a growled no. “I was up for Princess Leia,” she continues. “I was this close. But who gets it? The one who sleeps with George Lucas.”

The Fisher cameo is gratuitous, even more so than the movie stopping so Jay and Silent Bob can ogle the idea of Gale earlier in the film. But it does serve a plot point about famous doppelgängers, as Bianca leads Gale and Jennifer to learn that Maureen Prescott once performed under the name Rina Reynolds. Moreover, it captures the movie’s sense of humor, all knowing references and in-jokes.

That hyper focus on self-reference makes Scream 3 a less popular entry, but it also gives Posey room to play. She’s not just playing an actor who portrays Gale Weathers. She’s playing Courteney Cox, even using the Friends star’s facial expressions and exasperated line deliveries from the sitcom. Posey is the one who gets the joke of Scream 3, and does the metatextual humor better than anyone else in the series before or since.

It’s no accident that Jennifer’s murder happens behind a two-way mirror. As she gets attacked by Ghostface, Jennifer can see Gale and Dewey standing in the other room. And it’s probably good that she dies before Scream 3 hits its climax, sequestering her to the most self-indulgent parts of the film.

But by dying midway through a minor entry, Jennifer isn’t afforded the same love given to original characters like Sidney or Dewey, or to later additions such as Kirby and the Carpenter sisters. But she was the only one who understood what Scream 3 needed and thus is the only one who carried an entire movie on her back. For that, she deserves just as much praise as the other greats in the Scream canon.

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