In 'Scream' (1996) a psychotic killer with a love of horror movies murders teenager Casey Becker (Drew Barrymore) in the small American town of Woodsboro. The costumed killer then begins terrorising Casey's classmate, Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell), whose mother was murdered a year earlier.
When Sidney encounters the stalker and escapes, her boyfriend Billy (Skeet Ulrich) is arrested. However, the phone calls and killings continue. 

The sequel, 'Scream 2' (1997), takes place a year on from the events of the first film when survivors Sidney and Randy Meeks (Jamie Kennedy) are now students at the same college.
A movie based on the Woodsboro murders, 'Stab', sparks a series of copycat killings, and soon the nightmare is beginning all over again. While Sidney wonders who she can really trust, Randy teams up with former police deputy Dewey (David Arquette), still recovering from the effects of his stabbing the first time round, to work out the rules of a real-life horror sequel. One thing's for sure: the body count has to be higher.
Also back on the scene are reporter Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox), who has successfully published her own account of the original killings - sacrificing her romance with Dewey in the process - and Cotton Weary (Liev Schreiber), the man Sidney had wrongfully imprisoned for her mother's murder. 

Finally, in 'Scream 3' (2000) talk show host Cotton Weary is murdered by a masked figure, generating plenty of publicity for the upcoming release of 'Stab 3 - Return to Woodsboro', the third in a series of films based around the real-life events. When two of the film's cast are also murdered production is called to a halt, and the three remaining Woodsboro survivors - recluse Sidney Prescott, television reporter Gale Weathers and former police deputy Dewey - join forces to find the killer.