10 Horror Movie Retcons Everyone HATED

Scream 3's big twist is of course that Ghostface is Stab 3 filmmaker Roman Bridger (Scott Foley), who is actually Sidney's (Neve Campbell) half-brother born to her mother Maureen.

It's then revealed that Roman attempted to make contact with Maureen four years prior, but when she rejected him due to his conception being the result of rape, he began covertly filming her promiscuous sexual activity, including capturing her affair with Billy Loomis' (Skeet Ulrich) father.

Roman then showed this footage to Billy, prompting him and Stu Macher (Matthew Lillard) to kill Maureen, which in turn led to the events of both prior Scream movies.

Basically, Scream 3 installed Roman as the architect of the entire original trilogy, and considering how rarely these "it was me all along!" retcons go well, it unsurprisingly went down like a lead balloon with fans.

Many felt that it robbed Billy of his own murderous agency in the first Scream, and beyond that it simply made the chain of events in the first three movies seem considerably more contrived.

And on top of that, Roman just isn't a particularly compelling Ghostface, and so a damn unsatisfying puppet-master villain.