Ranking the Stab movies

Discussing all eight films in the slasher franchise

1.      Stab 4: Eternal Knife (2007)

In retrospect, bringing in Eli Roth to direct the fourth entry – the first one with no “ripped-from-the-headlines” true-crime elements – was the right choice for what was then a beleaguered franchise. It was also the first time that a writer-director was given full control of a Stab project, and (though there are persistence rumours that Quentin Tarantino provided an uncredited punch-up to the material) Roth’s caustic, sarcastic, yet oddly-sensitive voice rings clearly enough to provide a distinct worldview. A lot of the humanity that the material needs to truly work is supplied by a strong supporting cast, especially Mads Mikkelsen as the intemperate cop on the trail of Neo Ghostface, and Rainn Wilson as occultist Dr. Zlatko Bugeimann. Together, they more than make up for the lack of charisma proffered by new leading man Taylor Kitsch.

While it has been criticized for wallowing in sadism, and indulging in Saw-like horror-porn and complex kills (Neo Ghostface did have a baffling penchant for Rube Goldberg-style lethal contraptions) the film ultimately works as a satire of the sublimated violence inherent to late-stage capitalism. We see how the only thing that’s really unacceptable from the perspective of the elites (as represented by Ed Harris’ shadowy Agent 9) is allowing the common people to glimpse the true process of brutality behind the shiny facade of their comfortable world. It’s a movie that was unfairly misunderstood at the time, and one that now deserves to be treated as a hidden classic. Though that metalcore soundtrack (Killswitch Engage during the climax?) still deserves the hatred.

2.      Stab (1997)

A nineties classic for a reason. While there’s an angle to attack Stab for its cynical posturing, its self-awareness as a cash-grab, its post-modernist blurring of reality and fiction, and generally for being the too-cool product of an end-of-history youth culture convinced of its own ironicized sophistication, ultimately, Robert Rodriguez’s film was a hit because it works. The shocks (Heather Graham getting killed in the opening scene, which somehow came as a surprise despite the heavy-handed Psycho references), the chemistry of the cast (who knew Tori Spelling and Luke Wilson would be so dynamic together?), and the chilling, if too-jaded (this was pre-Columbine, after all) evocation of a generation inured to violence, all add up to a potent, heady mix.

It may not be a stone-cold masterpiece on the order of Halloween, but this true-crime thriller spawned a franchise precisely because it hit the right notes. Uncredited work by Robert Towne to enliven the script certainly helped, and so may have some behind-the-scenes participation from Ron Howard, who appears in a bit role. All-in-all, Stab was lightning in a bottle.

3.      Stab 5: The Clock Strikes Mid-Knife (2008)

Okay, hear me out. Yes, I’m talking about the notorious time-travel sequel, and I understand if you’re surprised to see it ranked this high. But after the fourth film broke away from “it could happen to you” thriller elements, and embraced the possibility of the supernatural through Dr. Bugeimann’s harvesting of Neo Ghostface’s energy and the revelation of the 1000-year-old Cult of the Blade, the door was open for cross-genre experimentation. And Stab 5 not only went through that door, it smashed through the whole wall like a crazed Kool-Aid man, creating a weird and pretty unforgettable movie in the process.

Working from an unhinged, overstuffed script by Richard Kelly, director Justin Lin gave the material the zany, tacky look it deserved, replete with lots of Dutch angles, cast members weighed down by multiple necklaces and scarfs, a kung-fu sequence, and yes, that notorious cameo where Paris Hilton doses Ghostface Zero with MDMA. While it’s true that it screwed up the continuity, Sean William Scott didn’t work as the tortured dramatic lead, and it was a dumb idea to make a time-traveling Ghostface responsible for the Kennedy assassination, there’s a throughline of regret that imbues Kelly’s screenplay with an unexpected poignancy. The key is to view the movie not as a Stab film (and it barely was – it would be quickly retconned out of existence) but as its own statement about the cruel machinations of time. As Udo Keir says in his memorable appearance as The Counsellor: “you should be resigned to death, since it has already claimed every life not lived, and every past second of the one you fleetingly possess.” Pretty heady stuff for a movie better remembered for Kris Kristofferson playing a cowboy with a laser gun hunting Ghostfaces across multiple timelines.

4.      Stab 2 (1999)

All things considered, the quickie sequel to the original Stab – with Joe Chapelle taking over directing duties from Rodriguez, who was uninterested in returning – was probably better than it should have been. Notorious for controversies – both the way it references copycat killings, and, as we now know, the behaviour of producer Harvey Weinstein towards stars Jennifer Jolie and Selma Blair while on set – the film itself is surprisingly gripping. The script, credited to five writers (including a young Noah Baumbach) has its moments, and the returning cast gets a boost from the addition of Josh Hartnett.

If Stab 2 had a negative impact, it was because it began to insert meta-humour into the franchise, setting the stage for some of the sillier incursions to come. We did not need to have Mark McGwire play a gym teacher who fights off the killer with a baseball bat, and we definitely did not need Ben Affleck to show up as a famous actor preparing to interpret one of the heroes in a Hollywood version of the events. Movie-within-a-movie jokes never work.

5.      Stab 7: Knife of the Hunter (2010)

Well, that’s one way to deal with a poorly-received sequel. Stab 7’s notorious decision to reveal, in the opening scene featuring Kristen Bell and Anna Paquin (who, despite dying within the first three minutes, somehow has more lines of dialogue here than she does in The Irishman) that Stab 6 was actually a movie within the universe of Stab 7, continues to be exhaustingly debated. After the time-travel fuckery of Stab 5 was mostly glossed-over (with sundry discontinuities ignored) by Stab 6, the choice to sequester 6 into a fictive world only further complicated the timelines going forward, casting doubt on which events in which films are “real” or not. It’s a whole thing.

So what about the rest of Stab 7? It’s fine, I guess. Very much a capsule of its era (including a bizarre appearance by Kreayshawn) the Scott Derrickson-helmed picture is a grim and dingy exercise in webcams and gore and humourless dialogue exchanges. The decision to turn it into a found-footage movie halfway through its runtime was certainly unexpected, but it did provide some dynamism to material that was running the risk of growing stale. Dimension Films had been scaling back the budgets of these sequels, and this one barely escaped straight-to-DVD hell, with the appearance of Taylor Lautner rumoured to have been what saved it. You can call it a reasonable attempt to correct course after a couple messy sequels, and it has its moments (who can forget the notorious “vuvuzela kill”?) but ultimately, it’s a failure that temporarily killed off the struggling series.

6.      Stab 6: Ghostfacebook (2009)

Ah yes, the instantly-dated social-media panic picture. Insipidly directed by Rick Bota, the movie ignored most of the messiness of Part 5, and instead tried to return to somewhat-grounded real-world anxieties. But its attempts to mock the Saw franchise fall flat, and the would-be social commentary – including Ghostface triangulating his victims through a “what type of cat are you?” quiz, the bit where he hacks FarmVille to kill people’s avatars, and the godawful attempt to use “unfriended, bitch!” as a catchphrase – are just cringe-inducing today.

Could better filmmakers have made something out of the themes of bifurcated identity in an age of omnipresent screens? Maybe, but it would have taken a better cast than this one (headlined by Leighton Meester and Chad Michael Murray) and better lines than “the difference between a hacker and a slasher is thinner than the blade of a knife.” Add in the credulity-straining Ring-esque finale, and you can see why they wanted to retcon this out of existence.

7.      Stab 3: Hollywood Horror (2006)

It’s almost incredible that the Stab franchise survived the clusterfuck that was the third film. After an attempt at producing Stab 3 in 2000 using the “Return to Woodsboro” script ended in disaster, the troubled project was eventually revived with more recent “true crime” elements crassly incorporated. But the blurred-lines meta approach was incoherent, the Hollywood setting felt lame, constant rewrites took their toll, and this would mark the end of the original “Woodsboro Trilogy” of Stab films.

Officially credited to Alan Smithee (production began with Rob Zombie as director, but Jim Gillespie replaced him after Zombie stormed out of the project) it has all the hallmarks of a stitched-together Frankenfilm, and multiple attempts to shoehorn in cameos (Chris Kattan as a childish parody of a screaming, egotistical producer was a low-point, and I can’t imagine how they convinced David Duchovny to play himself as a drugged-out paranoiac) only make it worse. If there’s one redeeming quality to this nasty, gruesome satire, it’s that its failure paved the way for more experimentation in later entries.

8.      Stab (2020)

Look, I get it. There are countless fans of Rian Johnson’s new pseudo-reboot/legacyquel Stab film who will defend it tooth-and-nail from the so-called “toxic fanbase” who decried it as “woke” and “ruining their childhood.” But have the boosters considered that, culture wars aside, the movie is just not very good?

While it’s fun, in theory, to have a pure whodunit Stab thriller, the eighth Stab’s self-satisfied reference-rich dialogue is honestly just too smug and irritating, constantly congratulating the audience at the expense of actually engaging them. And I’m not so much bothered by the picture’s inability to square the circle with regards to the franchise’s Byzantine chronology (though, how would Daniel Kaluuya’s character know about the Cult of the Blade, when Sydney Sweeney’s character makes it clear we’re in the same timeline as the FarmVille Slaughter?) as I am by it’s sense of superiority with regards to the themes we had in earlier films. Attempts at visceral spectacle – the Mecha Ghostface reveal, where he wields a flamethrower – are played as jokes, beneath the material, subordinate to the sub-Columbo shenanigans gratingly interpreted by an overacting cast. I’d honestly rather have a mess than a film that’s so noxiously sure of itself.