20 Most Badass Female Horror Characters Ever

While making a parody of slasher movies, it would have been easy for Wes Craven to write a really dumb protagonist who can’t hold her own against the villain. But instead he gave us Sidney Prescott.

Sidney is a perfect character, a horror protagonist you truly root for and who's smart as hell. That’s made abundantly clear in the original Scream when she’s being threatened by Billy and Stu. She slips away while they're distracted, and she actually has the guts to call the killers herself and taunt them using the Ghostface voice. But this is all after she has already called the police, something slasher characters rarely manage to do.

She then actually kills both Bill and Stu in the most badass way possible. Billy Loomis is lying on the ground, and in every other slasher movie he’d immediately come back to life and strike one last time. But Sidney isn’t having any of that, so she grabs her gun and shoots him point blank in the freaking head.

Unlike most franchises, Sidney actually appears in every single sequel, and she only continues to get stronger and more sure of herself every time. She’s a true hero to any slasher fan, a capable young woman who fights back against everything the horror gods fling at her.