10 Smartest Decisions Made By Scream Characters
2. Joel Leaves Woodsboro Until The Killers Are Dead - Scream 2
And now we come to arguably the smartest character in the entire Scream franchise and possibly even horror movies as a whole.
Joel Jones (Duane Martin) is Gale's cameraman in Scream 2, replacing his similarly-named predecessor Kenny Jones (W. Earl Brown) who was butchered by Ghostface in the first movie.
From basically the moment Joel arrives in the sequel, he's clearly anxious about covering such a dangerous story and reluctant to follow Gale's enthusiastic lead when the bodies start piling up.
When Joel returns from an errand to find Randy dead in his van, he decides he's had enough, giving Gale all the footage he's shot so far and getting the hell out of town.
As such, Joel is absent for basically the entire third act, sitting out Ghostface's final rampage and only returning in the closing moments of the film to resume working as Gale's cameraman.
Given that Joel had victim written all over him from the moment he showed up, and considering the not-great track record of Black men surviving slasher movies (including this very one), it was an hilarious, satisfying subversion to see him just... peace out of the story altogether.
Joel reacted completely realistically to news of a masked murderer being in his midst, which immediately makes him the smartest guy in the room.
Curiously, Joel was originally written as one of Sidney's friends who gets killed by Ghostface, but script leaks caused him to be rewritten into Gale's cameraman, a job originally given to Randy.