2024 Scream Queen Power Rankings: Just in Time for Halloween!

In the current movie landscape, few genres hold such sway over theatrical and streaming releases as horror. There are so many horror movies coming out, in fact, that the Hollywood Reporter recently Halloween 2024, there’s a robust list of currently active Scream Queens who have made multiple horror movies and show little sign of retiring from the genre. Hence this power ranking, exploring where a dozen different actresses fall in the greater horror scene. (Patrick Wilson, Justin Long, and Kyle Gallner will have to wait for their own Scream Kings list.) To be clear, everyone on this list is an excellent performer; their rankings only reflect the various ups and downs of a Hollywood career. It could all shift by the next full moon.

1. Taissa Farmiga

   The Type: Resilient flower

   Key Works: Both Vera Farmiga

   Current Status: While many others on this list have a more modern energy, Farmiga specializes in a more old-fashioned gothic style – which isn’t a minus at all. But the Nun movies feel a bit tapped out, and a Scream Queen cannot subsist on Ryan Murphy projects alone.

2. Kiernan Shipka

   The Type: Mischievous disruptor

   Key Works: Totally Killer; The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina on TV; a single memorable scene from Longlegs

   Current Status: Mad Men’s Sally Draper suddenly became known as a powerful pinch-hitter this year when she turned up briefly in Longlegs and the kinda-sorta horror-adjacent Twisters. Her star turn in last year’s Happy Death Day-ish Totally Killer was less inspired, though that’s more on the movie than her work in it. Still: Her leading roles have felt pretty TV-bound, whether because they were actual shows like her Riverdale spinoff, or glorified TV movies like Killer. Still, she’s got the chops, and turning up for single-scene freak-outs is its own kind of flex.

3. Sophie Thatcher

   The Type: Scrappy teen

   Key Works: Yellowjackets; the upcoming Heretic and Companion

   Current Status: Thatcher is more of an up-and-comer to movie horror; The Boogeyman wasn’t all that good, and her one-scene role in MaXXXine was more ceremonial than galvanizing. But the about-to-open Heretic brings her back into the A24 fold, while Companion is produced by Barbarian’s Zach Cregger. She’s also considered goth for life through her portrayal of Nat, the bad girl of Yellowjackets. Pretty much the entire younger half of that cast could pretty easily parlay their work there into a horror career, and Thatcher appears to be the one going for it the hardest.

5. Rebecca Hall

   The Type: Professional woman who should not be burdened with this nonsense

   Key Works: Godzilla fights King Kong

   Current Status: Hall may actually be the flat-out best actress on this list, able to bring a more subtle anguish to her unraveling characters in indie horror features like The Night House (which is very scary) and Resurrection (which is very… something). She can even bring deep and abiding conviction to lines about how “if Kong draws Godzilla down here, they can make their stand in Hollow Earth, and there’s a chance that Godzilla can stop Skar King and Shimo from reaching the surface.” So why isn’t she higher in the power rankings? Well, partly out of abdication: she does plenty of non-horror movies, befitting her enormous talent, and age-wise she fits into an earlier generation of scream queens. The fact that she had such notable horror roles later in her career, though, makes her a particularly strong representative in an era better at recognizing all of the scary stuff that can stalk you well into adulthood and beyond.

6. Georgina Campbell

   The Type: The smart one

   Key Works: The Watchers; the upcoming Psycho Killer

   Current Status: Campbell starred in one of the best pure horror movies of the 2020s with Barbarian, and given the range of emotions she gets to play in a seemingly simple don’t-go-in-there role, it would have been understandable if she had lit out for tonier projects. But she seems to be sticking in the horror-thriller world with Psycho Killer, playing a cop in pursuit of a serial killer. It could be key in cementing her on-screen persona after the waffle-y likes of The Watchers.

7. Samara Weaving

   The Type: Fierce when cornered

   Key works: Scream VI

   Current Status: Everyone’s favorite Margot Robbie lookalike has embraced her blood-soaked roots, even circling back to do a Ready or Not sequel with filmmaking team Radio Silence. It’s always a delight to watch a final girl knowing that she’s very likely going to wind up heavily splattered in crimson whilst kicking ass, but post-Ready or Not, there’s maybe a touch of calculation to her moves that render them as potentially predictable as, well, a Ready or Not sequel.

8. Melissa Barrera

   The Type: Closet romantic

   Key works: Screams Abigail; Your Monster

   Current Status: Barrera has been burned by the genre that made her name; Scream producers impulsively fired her from her leading role in that franchise revival for voicing the apparently controversial opinion that killing people in Gaza is bad. But while her singing chops (remember she co-starred in the musical In the Heights) could easily write her ticket out of the genre, she’s chosen to simply do musical, rom-com, and horror all at once with the new movie Your Monster. The movie doesn’t completely work, but it sticks the landing and showcases her versatility.

9. Anya Taylor-Joy

   The Type: Witchy woman

   Key works: The Witch; Split; Thoroughbreds; Last Night in Soho

   Current Status: ATJ had a big year, but not in horror; she took over the role of Furiosa for the Mad Max prequel of the same name and earned great reviews, though the movie flopped at the box office. Her next big project is from horror mainstay Scott Derrickson, though The Gorge seems to be more action-adventure than horror. The scream-queen crown is always hers if she wants it, but she may have moved on to imbuing less traditionally horror-related roles with her otherworldly vibe.

10. Kathryn Newton

    The Type: Dark diva

    Key works: Freaky

    Current Status: Newton had done some horror work before 2024, but within the space of a few months, playing a lovesick, dead-raising misfit in the underrated Lisa Frankenstein and a goofy mercenary in the vampire romp Abigail lifted her into the big time. In those movies and Freaky, she’s able to play to the comedy of various mordantly absurd situations without turning her characters into cutesy jokes. Now that she’s appeared in Universal releases dabbling in Dracula and Frankenstein; it’s time for her to play a werewolf or possibly meet the Creature from the Black Lagoon.

11. Jenna Ortega

    The Type: Goth next door

    Key Works: VI; X; that horrible Foo Fighters horror movie; the massive cred of appearing in an Insidious sequel as a tween

    Current Status: Possibly the biggest sign of how horror culture has shifted into the mainstream over the past few decades is the fact that the actress with one of the horror-heaviest resumes on this list is also arguably the most popular. Jenna Ortega was already familiar to audiences from the Scream and Wednesday franchises; then she reached across generational divides with the massive hit Beetlejuice sequel. Only the fact that none of her next four (!) movies are horror keeps her from a higher position.

12. Mia Goth

    The Type: “Y’all might as well go home because I just fucking nailed that!”

    Key Works: The A Cure for Wellness; soon, a Guillermo del Toro version of Frankenstein; probably never, the Blade movie she was cast in a year ago

    Current Status: MaXXXine may not have been quite as acclaimed as its predecessors, but it became the biggest-grossing of Ti West’s impromptu horror trilogy, and the outfits alone will secure Goth’s Maxine Minx as a Halloween-costume icon for years to come. Normally, she might get points off for her signature part being so meta: a scream queen playing an aspiring scream queen. But Goth knows when to go genuinely unhinged (as in last year’s Infinity Pool) and when to play complicated emotions closer to the vest – which she does, actually, throughout much of MaXXXine. She’s become one of the genre’s – one of the medium’s, really – most unpredictable, yet also predictably mesmerizing, stars.

13. Maika Monroe

    The Type: Victim of millennial burn-out and also stalking

    Key Works: Longlegs

    Current Status: After joining the horror work force over a decade ago, Maika Monroe has really grown up in the genre, finally achieving a breakout hit with this summer’s Longlegs, the serial-killer freakout that managed to outgross plenty of big-studio titles. More than anyone on this list, she embodies the way that sticking with horror can allow a performer to explore different aspects of the human experience, from the youthful uncertainty of It Follows to the relationship woes of Significant Other, the sexism on display in Watcher, or the adult-professional alienation of Longlegs. Monroe’s crown is hard-won, and – for now – hers to give up.

14. All the Classics!

    Time hasn’t actually dulled the power of Jamie Lee Curtis, Fay Wray, Heather Langenkamp, Lin Shaye, Barbara Crampton, Adrienne Barbeau, Dee Wallace, Linda Blair, and all the rest!