I was very excited about the new Scream, but I was also very nervous. Remakes can totally mess up the original and then there was the fact that they were trying to make this into a TV show. I was very happy with what we got in the first episode.
The new Randy, Noah (John Karna), stated from the beginning that you can’t do a slasher as a TV show because they burn bright fast, but that’s exactly what MTV is trying to do. At the end of the episode we got our new rules: You have to care, so when they are brutally murdered, it hurts. Also: “Everyone has secrets. Everyone tells lies. Everyone is fair game, until there’s no one left.”
We got a little taste of that right off the bat. When Noah was out on the lake I thought he was going to be the next victim, which I would have been really mad if he was. I want the Randy character to last longer this time around. Luckily he wasn’t the next victim.
The writers teased us again when Brooke (Carlson Young) went into the garage and you really thought we were going to get Tatum’s death scene. The writers set us up for a death scene and then let her live.
I really like the backstory to this Scream. It’s much more detailed and has a little bit of a Jason feel to it.
Brandon James killed five teenagers 20 years ago. He had Proteus Syndrome, which meant that he was deformed due to overgrowth of the bones, skin and other tissues. Noah believes that he was bullied and beaten into a killer and not just born that way. Noah also has a little bit of an obsession for serial killers.
Brandon was infatuated with Emma’s (Willa Fitzgerald) mom, Maggie (Tracy Middendorf), but no one knows that she was the girl. Maggie confesses to Sheriff Clark Hudson (Jason Wiles) that she was the girl. Brandon also stabbed Emma’s father, he survived, but with physiological scars that never healed. That’s what made him leave and now Maggie doesn’t know where he is. Emma has no idea how connected she is to the whole thing.
This backstory is very interesting. Is Brandon James still alive and who is connected to him? Audrey (Bex Taylor-Klaus) has a picture of him in her room, but it could be curiosity. She is a film geek after all and her town has a nice dark history. Could Emma’s father, Kevin, be so twisted from what happened to him that he’s behind the murders? That’s too easy, right? Then there was that weird moment when Noah had blood across his forehead. I would be upset if the killer turned out to be Noah, it’s not supposed to be him! He’s a victim in all of this.
One thing is for sure, MTV is spreading the murders out. There was only two this episode. I wasn’t too impressed with how they redid the epic opening scene. It wasn’t as drawn out as the original film or as hauntingly scary. The opening scene from the 1996 Scream stays with you, this one not so much. But the writers made up for it with their truly creepy backstory.
Secondly, there is a lot of high school drama. Emma’s boyfriend, Will (Connor Weil), slept with the victim, Nina (Bella Thorn). Audrey got outed in front of the whole school after a video of her and a girl making out went viral on YouTube. And we’ve already started with a party.
The new Sidney, Emma, isn’t quite as innocent this time around. She made out with the new guy, Kieran (Amadeus Serafini). The original Sidney would never have done that.
But we are off to a great start. Now that we know the characters, who will die next?
Here’s what we can look forward to this season:
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_vb_rvOxQk]