Have you ever watched a slasher film and found yourself rooting for the villain? 

As the victim slowly meanders down a dark alleyway after hearing a loud noise, did you happen to say: “Well, she deserves it at this point.” When I first watched “Scream,” I won’t lie, like many other fans of the series I found myself rooting for the villain (or in this case, villains). 

Slashers are brutally honest about how their worlds operate. 

The first time I caught myself rooting for the killer in a slasher film, it seemed wrong — or at the very least concerning. But the more slashers I watched, the more I realized it wasn’t the violence that felt satisfying, it was the clarity.

Slashers don’t follow the rules of typical films — even the horror genre. The villain fully understands and internalizes the rules of the world — everyone else just pretends those rules don’t exist. Victims ignore warning signs, clinging to the illusion that they’re safe because they’re “good people”; putting their trust in broken systems. 

As I watched “Scream,” however, I realized most villains don’t share that illusion. They operate with total narrative clarity. With the knowledge of which genre they are in exclusively under their belt, they anticipate the behavior of their victims — and inevitably control and manipulate the pace of the story to their personal liking. In a film obsessed with rules, Ghostface is the only character who consistently plays by them, giving him immense power. 

In most slashers, institutions fail first. Authority figures are useless or absent, and safety is, at most, performative. The killer’s presence exposes how fragile normalcy really is, how quickly everything can go from zero to 100. When audiences root for the villain, it’s because the villain is the only character acknowledging the reality of the system (or genre they’re in). Ghostface says the quiet part out loud: there are rules and they aren’t fun, but ignoring them won’t protect you. That clarity feels honest in a genre built on exposing false comfort. 

Take the scene with Tatum in the garage. The film has already established that characters who treat the situation like a joke — or downplay the danger they are in — are deeply vulnerable. 

Tatum mocks the killer, calls him a “pussy” and assumes the threat isn’t real. She believes normalcy — a party, friends in the other room, a familiar house — protects her. Ghostface responds by turning that exact comfort against her, trapping and killing her in a space that she should feel safe in. He plays by the slasher rule that overconfidence and denial are punishable-by-death offenses. The audience understands this pattern before she does. So, when the consequence arrives, it feels less random and more like the brutal logic of the film being fulfilled.

Slashers also punish archetypes more than morality. Characters don’t die because they’re “bad” people, they die because they fit patterns. The genre exaggerates social scripts, and then dismantles them. We can see this with how Tatum was killed and how the audience, such as myself, felt satisfaction not at her death (as she was personally my favorite character) but at the confirmation that I was right she would be killed. Watching the killer dismantle those scripts can feel less like cheering for evil and more like watching inevitability unfold; since we aren’t as connected emotionally to the characters, we don’t mind seeing this initially taboo subject play out. 

There’s something unsettlingly satisfying about that inevitability.

Villains in slashers don’t hesitate; they don’t negotiate with a system that’s already failed. Rooting for them becomes a way of rejecting false comfort and embracing the harsh logic of the film’s universe. That doesn’t mean audiences endorse violence. In a nihilist fashion, it means they recognize narrative control. 

Slashers strip away the fantasy that things will work out simply because they should. The villain doesn’t pretend the world is fair, and neither does the genre. It’s the same reason people are drawn to characters who break social illusions in other genres, not because they’re “good” people necessarily, but because they’re clear-eyed. In that honesty, viewers find a strange sense of relief. We don’t root for slashers’ villains because they’re right, we root for them because being “in the know” feels good. “Scream” turns horror rules into a game the audience is invited to play. When Ghostface warns a character not to say something: “I’ll be right back,” “This is the part where…,” the viewer already knows what comes next. So when the character says it anyway and gets killed, it creates a twisted sense of confirmation. The film told us the rule, the character broke it and the consequence followed exactly as promised. That predictability is satisfying.

It’s not happiness about someone dying, it’s pleasure in understanding the system. Viewers feel smart because they recognized the pattern before the character did. When Ghostface kills someone for saying the “wrong” thing, it rewards the viewer for paying attention. We aren’t cheering for violence, we’re enjoying the feeling of being ahead of the narrative.

“Scream” weaponizes that feeling.

By making the rules explicit, the film aligns the viewer with the killer’s perspective. We see what’s coming. We know the character shouldn’t say that line. When Ghostface follows through, it feels like the film is keeping its promise. That alignment creates a momentary sense of complicity. We’re emotionally closer to the killer than to the victim because we share the same knowledge. That’s where the discomfort comes in. “Scream” makes us realize how easily knowledge turns into detachment. Being “in on the joke” makes the violence feel inevitable instead of tragic. The film uses that reaction to critique us, not indulge us. It asks why understanding the rules can make us less empathetic, and why we mistake that feeling for control.

So when audiences root for Ghostface, part of it is about truth and clarity, but part of it is also about the pleasure of prediction. We like being right, and we like knowing what’s coming. “Scream” exploits that instinct, then turns it back on us.  

So, I challenge you, next time you watch a horror film that eerily reminds you of how you felt watching “Scream,” ask yourself: “Is the director trying to manipulate me to like the killer? And, more importantly, is it working?” 

Juliana Chandler thinks rooting for the villain in “Scream” is less about violence and more about control.