10 Movies That Weren’t Brave Enough To Kill The Main Character

4. Sidney Prescott - Scream 4

Scream 4 was a fairly good follow-up in a franchise that had by that time been dormant for eleven years. For a series so focused on a meta-textual approach to all the rules of the horror genre, it was a treat to see Wes Craven and his cohorts tackle the tenets of horror in the twenty-tens. Craven could've upped the stakes massively on top of that, by actually killing off one his remaining three franchise mainstays, be it Neve Campbell, Courtney Cox or David Arquette. The trailer even had the internet buzzing that Gale Weathers (Cox) was actually going to buy the farm this time out. Unfortunately, this wasn't the case. While Scream 4 was an underrated, enjoyable entry into the canon, audiences were once again cheated out of any real stakes, with a series of bland new characters being murdered rather than any fan favourites (heaven forbid).

Like Jamie Kennedy's much-loved character Randy had said in Scream 3, the rules of horror film franchises change as of the third entry. Once you reach a trilogy... anyone can die ("this means you Sid!"). Yet the director, the writer and/or the studio copped-out, both there and the reboot. Finally seeing Sidney Prescott die at the hands of Ghostface after all this time would've been a huge shock, and I'd even wager there'd be some sort of twisted audience satisfaction gained from the moment. To see the killer(s) achieve what all iterations of Ghostface had wanted for nineteen years would surely have made for a great finale, and a solid sendoff for Wes Craven, the master of horror.