Can a slasher flick be turned into television series? That’s the question that MTV’s new Scream television remake asks us, literally. It’s a throwback to the film franchise. Just as Scream the motion picture brought back the old slasher film formula with an added meta twist, the television series also steals from it’s predecessor but further adds tongue and cheek winks to the audience. This appears to be the running theme of Scream the series, take from the original source material (almost verbatim) and add just another layer to keep it fresh.
It’s not necessarily a bad thing. Fans of the original film who saw it in high school are well into their thirties by now and will most likely roll their eyes at this new culture of teens who are obsessed with social media and use text speak as verbal communication. Like it or not though, this is what high school is like nowadays and, these innocent examples aside, kids today have a slew of new, serious problems facing them such as cyber bullying and slut shaming over social media.
This is what kicks off Scream the series. It begins with a video of Audrey, a film-loving outcast, making out with another girl in her car at a secluded overlook. The video is posted to YouTube and immediately goes viral with comments flashing across the screen shaming her and outing her as a lesbian.
It’s moments like this that do a good job at updating the story for a modern audience and manage to keep it relevant. Unfortunately things begin to take a little bit of a nosedive from there.
We quickly learn who took the video and posted for the whole school to see. Bella is your typical entitled asshole who’s also stereotypically promiscuous, because irony I guess. She’s the first one to meet her demise at the hand of our mysterious killer, a familiar black-robed figure with an all-new mask, this time with a high gloss finish.
The death scene is meant to mimic the iconic scene from the movie with Drew Barrymore as the victim. Shot for shot it works, but the similarities end there.
Rather than call Bella on the phone like they did in the original film, the killer/victim interaction is all done through text and videos sent to her phone. I understand that text is the main method of communication for just about everyone nowadays, but the scene really loses a lot from the switch. No ominous voice over receiver, just a string of words flashing across a cellphone screen.
The switch also makes for a few unintended laughs. Unless you’re WOPR from WarGames, text is always significantly slower than actually talking to someone. To address this, anytime Bella is texting our killer back the director speeds the film up resulting in weird, rapid finger movements similar to Data from Star Trek TNG. Unlike Data though, this doesn’t translate into an impressive feat of dexterity, but rather what a thumb war would look like if thumbs had nostrils and could snort a pound of cocaine.
The differences continue. Both characters from the series and film respond to the killer with skepticism, never believing they are truly in danger until it’s too late. In the film, Barrymore responds with snarky comebacks, a dialogue trend that continues throughout the film. Bella, on the other hand, takes a different approach. As the killer sends texts and threatening videos shot from directly behind her to her phone, Bella simply assumes this is some elaborate attempt by her classmate to get in her pants. Rather than snark, Bella decides that flirtation is the best way to deal with this scenario, along with choosing that very moment to take a late night dip in the hot tub. To be fair, this type of stupidity continues. Just moments before Bella meets her end, she screams into her phone, “Dial 911!” only to have a Siri-like helper respond, “Calling Pottery Barn,” before giving up on calling for help entirely. Bella has already shown proficiency texting, shooting video, and posting to YouTube in a manner of minutes, but finding the keypad on her phone and dialing three simple numbers is apparently beyond her.
The series follows the plot of the original film from there. With the death of their classmate, we are introduced to the rest of the cast, each filling their purposefully cliché roles. There’s the bromance power couple of Will and Jake who take the place of Billy and Stuart from the original film. We have Brooke, the stuck up rich girl who’s into older men. Noah, the film geek who is either channeling Topher Grace, one of Topher Grace’s lost brothers, or a failed attempt by scientists to clone Topher Grace. Finally, there’s Emma, the nice, popular main protagonist with a heart of gold but not enough sense to find a new group of friends who aren’t such unapologetic dickheads.
Emma’s plight is almost identical to Sidney’s (Neve Campbell) from the film. As the pilot goes on, we learn that Emma’s mother, Margaret, has a past that may be directly related to the killer’s arrival.
The series does make an interesting change in keeping the mother alive and very much in Emma’s life. This has interesting possibilities, allowing Emma and Margaret to face challenges together, both against the killer and each other.
One of things that the series succeeds at is keeping the audience in the dark as to who the killer is, but dropping enough significant hints suggesting it could be anyone. Will and Jake have some shady dialogue together that raises suspicion. Then there’s Kieran, Emma’s other possible love interest. He seems like a nice enough guy, but clearly looks like he’s hiding something. Even film geek Noah has some pretty incriminating evidence against him by the end of the pilot. I’m assuming that if they plan to extend this series past one season they’re going to have to make the identity of the killer just the surface of a much bigger picture or do something similar to American Horror Story where each season introduces a new cast and plot.
Overall, Scream seems very targeted to this generation. It suffers from some bad acting, sloppy writing and corny dialogue to be sure, but to be fair, fans of cult film aren’t strangers to these things. Honestly, one of my favorite shows to watch was the 90210 remake very much because it was kind of ridiculous. The biggest problem the series faces is trying to compete with the original. From what it looks like so far, the series hasn’t quite captured the fear of the film and seems more concerned with appeasing its target audience. Still, it shows promise in a lot of areas. Let’s hope this is one of those series that take a few episodes to get off the ground.
