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Scream 2

This October, Decider.com is going to celebrate Halloween by honoring horror movies, and in particular, the characters who manage to survive the guts and garrottes and emerge at the end: the Final Girls. Each Friday, we’re going to profile a different Important Final Girl in horror history and pay tribute to what makes their finality truly special. Sometimes it will be one character, sometimes it will be an actress whose roles spanned multiple Final Girls.

This week’s Final Girl is Sidney Prescott.

NOTE: spoilers for the Scream movies follow.

The Final Girl

Sidney Prescott, as played by Neve Campbell, in all four Scream movies.

The Killer She’s Evaded

It’s been a parade of Ghostface killers with many different identities throughout the Scream movies. All told, seven human beings have tried to kill Sidney while donning the signature Scream mask, and she’s survived them all.

Why She Slays

When Scream premiered in 1996, the idea was that a generation raised on horror movies would be so attuned to the rules and rhythms of horror movies that they would spout off about the cliches even as they were embodying them. Sidney began the franchise as a virginal high-schooler, though by the end of the original film, she’d had sex with her boyfriend and still managed to defy the rule that only virgins survive horror movies. Sidney was the definitional final girl, the one who all the events of the film revolved around.

Also? She fought back! From the very first Ghostface attack in her home, Sidney was bashing the killer with a door and throwing a cordless phone (they were heavy then!) at his crotch. Like all final girls, Sidney was a survivor, and she would drop a TV on your face to make sure she did.

By the time the series got to Scream 4, the assumption was that the original gang — Sidney, Gale Weathers (Corteney Cox), and Dewey (David Arquette) — were there to pass the baton to Emma Roberts and her Millennial pals. OOPS, WRONG! Sidney Prescott was once again the last girl standing. She managed to survive even such formidable foes as reboot culture and all-consuming youth.

Her Best Moment

The bonkers/brilliant finale of Scream 2, as Sidney is being menaced by two killers AND is in the presence of the morally … let’s say persuadable Cotton Weary (Liev Schrieber). It seems like Cotton is going to be swayed by Debbie Salt’s (Laurie Metcalf) promises of media redemption, until Sidney proves herself to be more resourceful and ethically flexible than we’d expected. One quick promise of a Diane Sawyer interview with Cotton later, Debbie was dead as a doornail, and Sidney was halfway to surviving four Scream movies.

And this was after she managed to slash Mickey (Timothy Olyphant) with her necklace while punctuating the line “You’re forgetting one thing about Billy Loomis … I fucking killed him.” Just an all-around great day for her.