10 Horror Movies That Pissed Off Audiences Straight Away
8. Cotton's Death - Scream 3
The easiest way for any horror sequel to piss the fanbase off is to kill a popular and beloved character right off the bat, which is exactly what Scream 3 did.
In its pre-title sequence, fan favourite anti-hero Cotton Weary (Liev Schreiber) is slaughtered by the new Ghostface killer, in what was presumably intended to be an "all bets are off" mission statement, that anyone can die in this threequel, as Randy (Jamie Kennedy) confirms via videotape later on.
In the end, though, Scream 3 ended up being far more of a conventional slasher sequel than any other film in the series to date, and so Cotton's upsetting demise ultimately didn't really feel worth it.
You can certainly appreciate Wes Craven wanting to veer away from the pre-title kill sequences of the first two films - centered around characters fairly unimportant to the main story as they were - but that initial heartbreak of Cotton's death never felt justified by anything that followed.
Beyond Cotton being one of the series' most interesting characters, it doesn't help that his actual demise feels totally standard fare for the series, and it also introduces one of the silliest aspects of the entire franchise - Ghostface's new voice changer device, allowing him to sound like anyone.