Since making her Hollywood debut back in 2016 with Monster Trucks, Samara Weaving has consistently proved herself to be one of the most charismatic and ultra-talented stars of her generation. She can sell an action sequence, she can earn the audience’s empathy, and she can score laughs, all with seemingly comparable ease. But what she can do best is help a horror film stand out. Whether she’s playing the hero, the villain, or someone who exists between those two categories, she is the best part of every horror film which is lucky enough to have her, and the following four examples prove as much.
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A few movies missed the cut because they didn’t quite fit into the genre guideline. For instance, while Mayhem (one of her earliest films) is excellent, it’s more of an action-comedy than it is a horror film. Then there’s Borderline, her second most recent movie besides Eenie Meanie, which is a comedy thriller, just falling short of being a full-on scary movie. But these movies that follow? Like those aforementioned exclusions, they display how Weaving is a formidable talent, but they make an even stronger argument for her being the definitive scream queen of our modern era.
4) Scream VI
In just six minutes, Weaving manages to make her Scream VI character, Laura Crane, feel like a fleshed-out individual. She’s a university professor who is knowledgeable about the world of horror cinema and a young woman who is both excited for and nervous about her upcoming date. Then, after being duped by her student on the phone, she’s killed by a Ghostface.
We hate to see Weaving go so early in the film, but we’re glad we got to see her in a Scream movie at all. This Drew Barrymore-esque opening sequence cameo seems to have cemented her as this generation’s true scream queen. There’s no bigger slasher franchise than Scream since Radio Silence injected new life into it back in 2022, and there was a lot of anticipation leading up to Ghostface’s journey to the Big Apple. And, in that movie, the first face we see is Weaving’s. Sure, Radio Silence (Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett) knew Weaving from Ready or Not, but one gets the feeling that, even if they didn’t, she would be the one we see in the first frames of this high-grossing slasher. We also get to hear her use her true Australian accent, which is a nice change from the other movies on this list.
3) The Babysitter
The sequel, The Babysitter: Killer Queen (in which she has a cameo), may have gone in the too-goofy and too-stylized direction, but the first film still works. It’s not an iconic piece of horror cinema, but it is undoubtedly one of the most important entries in Weaving’s filmography. Every scene she’s in has her walk a tightrope wire and she nails it.
This is a character who made a deal with a devil and puts two knives into a nice, shy, jittery teen’s head so she and her pals can drink his blood. And yet, we still like her. We don’t quite root for her, because we learn she’s made a pact with the devil, but we’re hard pressed to say we don’t like her as a person. That’s all because of Weaving’s charming portrayal, as she conveys a mentoring nature just as often as she cracks a joke or, yes, does something awful. This was her Hollywood breakthrough, after a co-leading role in the excellent action-thriller Mayhem and a cameo role in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. It was technically her next film that put her on studio watchlists (considering it was theatrical, and she was the true lead of it), but The Babysitter was the first film that showed a great number of viewers just how easily she could command the screen.
2) Azrael
An overlooked and tense thrill ride with nary a word spoken (none outside of the intermittent title card read), Azrael is truly the Samara Weaving show. Her title character is really the sole individual we spend any considerable amount of time with. It’s not unlike James Franco in 127 Hours or Ryan Reynolds in Buried, the whole movie is on her shoulders.
She knocks it out of the park. Azrael exists in a post-rapture world where many people have severed their vocal cords in fear of attracting demonic creatures called the Burned Ones. She and her boyfriend are two of those people, and they’ve been tossed from their cult only to then be captured by its members for sacrifice to the Burned Ones. Azrael escapes and goes on a path of vengeance rife with mud, blood, and a particularly disturbing birth. Weaving is required to act with her facial expressions and her facial expressions alone, and she manages to convey every emotion in the human arsenal with just that tool.
1) Ready or Not
Now that Ready or Not: Her I Come has wrapped filming and will be here before we know it, it seems safe to say that Radio Silence’s modern horror classic has found the audience it deserves. And if there’s a most important film when it comes to analyzing Weaving’s career trajectory it’s this 2019 thrill ride.
Almost everything about Ready or Not functions like clockwork, from the script to the direction and cinematography, but Weaving is the glue that holds it all together. It’s a film that, like Azrael, puts her through her paces, but it also lets her show off her comedic chops. Even if Weaving goes on to win Oscars and star in a dozen major franchise films, Grace Le Domas in Ready or Not will be considered one of the most important roles of her career.
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