Chad Collins at his local premiere of Scream 4 in 2011 — Chad Collins at his local premiere of *Scream 4* in 2011

It’s no surprise to horror fans that the Scream franchise—particularly the first film—remains uniquely loved among the queer community. Of all the horror franchises to have graced the screen, it’s certainly odd that a film with so few coded queer elements (sans its writer, Kevin Williamson, being a gay man himself) would be as treasured as it is, but 24 years after the release of the first film, that oddity is something like settled law.

The gay community loves Scream.

With the announcement of Scream 5 several months ago and the slow but steady casting announcements, I thought it time to revisit the zenith of my love for the franchise and try to unpack why, exactly, it resonates as potently as it does with me as a young gay man.

I was sixteen in 2010 when the first trailer for Scream 4 dropped in October of that year at Spike TV’s Scream Awards. Not yet available online, I poured over grainy, distant cell footage from an audience member, unwilling to wait just 24 hours for it to be available during the televised Scream Awards broadcast. I wanted to—nay, I needed to—see it right away. Prior to that moment, I had been thrilled for the new installment, of course, but it had not yet registered with me just how important an event it was going to be in my life. The first film came out a year after I was born, and as much as my mom loved sharing her love of horror films with me, she certainly wasn’t dragging an infant to the premiere of Scream in 1996. Instead, as I got older, she began to slowly introduce me to the franchise.

Strangely enough, we started with Scream 3. We’d gone to Blockbuster after my first day of middle school, a kind of celebratory treat to my brothers and me. My mom did the unthinkable that day and let my two brothers pick a video game to rent (anyone who knows Blockbuster knows how expensive game rentals were), and while that was exciting to me– we got some Hulk game, best as I can remember– I did what I always did in Blockbuster; traipsed over to the horror section and poured over every cover, every case summary, to find something new.

2006 was a strange time, a sort of mini heyday for DTV genre offerings, and while I’d seen some of what was there, I had no interest in the covers with zombie pirates, hulking, skeletal sheriffs, or creepy dolls with titles like Doll Graveyard. It might sound strange, too, but as lenient as my mom was with horror films, those movies, I inexplicably reasoned, were off limits. I couldn’t find anything until my mom appeared with the VHS (yes, VHS was still somewhat popular in 2006) for Scream 3. The cover was admittedly kind of boring, but the summary and image of Ghostface on the back were enough to convince me to give it a shot.

We got popcorn and candy, and after homework that evening while my brothers played their Hulk game, my mom and I popped Scream 3 into the VHS player, and two hours later, I was hooked. I immediately needed to know everything about these people. I wanted to see the first two movies. I wanted to know what else these actors had done. I wanted to know why Courtney Cox’s bangs looked the way they did.

The parallels between 2006 and 2010/2011 are innumerable. After the release of the first trailer, I spent time on every blog and every message board I could find (remember the IMDB message boards), I bought the Entertainment Weekly issue on Scream 4 and read it more than two dozen times, and I even wrote (admittedly terrible) fan scripts for the franchise. I was Scream fan incarnate, and it was glorious. The Thursday the movie premiered, I was volunteering at an Italian ice store in my hometown, and in-between soliciting donations for the Class of 2012, I was ardently refreshing the Rotten Tomatoes page for Scream 4. 50% one hour, 60% (fresh!) the next. It was a wild back-and-forth, and though I had no stake at all in the critical reception, my heart fluttered every time it transitioned from rotten to fresh. Ultimately, it leveled out at a solid 60%, just enough to remain fresh, rendering Scream 3 the only film in the franchise to be certified rotten (though it’s not, in large part to Parker Posey).

The following day, I couldn’t even focus at school. I had tickets to the 10:00pm showing and it was all I could think about. I declined plans with friends and even skirted a few of my academic responsibilities– all I could think about was Scream 4. When I did see it, everything fell away. The theater floor was sticky and my seat had spring stabbing my backside, but I didn’t care– I felt like I was finally home. The thrill of having a new entry play on the big screen next year has reignited that fervor and forced upon me some opportunity to reflect on how and why the franchise means as much to me as it does.

I think for me, my fondness stems from, well, nostalgia and safety. When I first saw Scream 3, I hadn’t yet been fully immersed in the climate of 2006 middle school. School meant learning and fun, a stabilizing routine with kids just like me. Summer meant riding scooters with friends and the perennial scent of chlorine from the pool. As the year progressed, it meant kids calling you the F-word, making fun of your underwear in the locker room, and wondering why most of your friends were girls. It means internalizing those things and thinking that something was fundamentally broken in you. Summer morphed from cannonballs to hiding on the sidelines, not wanting to wear a swimsuit at parties, wondering how to best navigate conversations of which girls you thought were the cutest when, really, you didn’t think any girls were cute. By 2011, high school had proven to be much the same.

The Scream franchise, for whatever reason, was an escape. An ephemeral escape, but an escape, nonetheless. I could feel like a child again, experiencing something new and wonderful for the first time, a time where my sexuality didn’t put a target on my back, when my identity didn’t feel like satchels of bricks I had to carry forever, an unchanging weight that forever wore my shoulders down until I was nothing but a slumped shell of who I was and who I wanted to be. It taught me that I could be triumphant over the villains of my own life, that gossip and innuendo could only hurt me as much as I let them.

Just as I was thrilled for the premiere of Scream 4, I feel the same excitement for Scream 5. I’m older now, and it was still less than a year ago that I came out. I’m thrilled to see what this new perspective has to offer when I finally get to see the fifth film in the franchise. The case for me is the case for everyone– 2020 has sucked. It has been a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad year. Scream 5, as the movies have in the past, is a slight beacon of hope for the next year. My love for the franchise and the genre writ large have always kept me going, and I’m grateful for the cast and crew for giving a little more incentive– blood-soaked, meta slasher incentive– to keep my head up.