10 Movie Characters Who Were Killed Off Way Too Soon

When thinking about characters killed off early in the Scream franchise, Drew Barrymore's Casey Becker almost automatically comes to mind first. This, however, was an early death specifically designed to shock audiences, to subvert expectations, and to show that nobody was safe, and it worked perfectly.

The same can't be said of Randy Meeks' (Jamie Kennedy) death in Scream 2. He was a major character in both the original and the sequel, and was killed by Nancy Loomis (Laurie Metcalf) almost as an afterthought, in a fit of rage after he was critical of her son.

The movie, and the subsequent films in the series, suffered from Randy's omission, not least because he offered something to proceedings that no one else did. In the very meta-heavy world of Scream, it was Randy who brought such exposition and explanation that gave the franchise its trademark, and when he died, this was lost.

Sure, other characters offered certain aspects of this after his death, but the fact that in Scream (2022) his niece, Mindy Meeks-Martin (Jasmin Savoy Brown) was brought in as a new "rules expert" shows just how much his presence was missed. Of course, you don't want to offer too much plot armour to too many characters, and Randy's death may have been inevitable in the long term, but the franchise could have gotten a lot more from him than it ultimately did.