I’ll be the first to admit that MTV isn’t always the creator of amazing television. Since they stopped playing music videos, only a handful of their original shows have been worth watching. One of those shows was released this summer. Scream: The TV Series is a spin-off show of the extremely popular late 90s-2000s horror movie franchise created by Wes Craven. The horror genre is well known for their reboots and remakes, but few have ventured into the world of TV. This summer, the famous sequence of events that were recreated by Craven in the first Scream (1996), come to the small screen to terrorize a new generation of horror fans.
The Scream films redefined the slasher genre that had grown old by the 1990s. Kevin Williamson’s terrifying script and Wes Craven’s stellar directing brought the genre new life with the “Ghostface Killer”. Ghostface stalks after Sidney Prescott and her horror movie-obsessed friends, with phone calls and voice changers (there was no caller ID). But these aren’t your typical horror movie teens that run in the wrong direction; these kids know the “rules” of horror movies and use them to try to keep themselves safe. This was something completely new to the genre; Williamson had created intelligent, even self-aware characters that know something about what they’re dealing with. The incredibly popular movie was followed up by three more movies, each following a similar pattern: a main female character with a dark past (usually involving a murder – in the films, this was Sidney Prescott), her close friends – all dying at a rapid pace, anonymous phone calls terrorizing the main characters, and at least one horror movie buff who knows just enough to make themselves a suspect.
The TV reboot of Scream has all that, and more. When a viral video on YouTube has the worst consequences imaginable, and people in the small town of Lakewood start are being murdered, all eyes are turning to Emma Duvall, whose father was at the center of the towns dark past. When Emma starts receiving terrifying anonymous phone calls and texts, she realizes someone is starting to play with her life like a game. Everyone in the town is determined to either keep their secrets buried deep, or find out what each other has to hide. The show has an incredible cast of characters: Emma’s mom, Maggie Duvall is the Medical Examiner for their small town; Audrey Jensen is a future filmmaker who never quite turned out like everyone expected; Noah Foster is the dorky, serial killer know-it-all who knows just enough to make everyone trust him; Brooke Maddox is the rich daughter of the mayor whose mom left a few weeks ago; and so many more characters with secrets that’ll make you agree that “everybody’s a suspect.”
This show not only takes the Scream franchise to a new level, but also takes the horror genre to a new level. It takes the basic idea of a slasher film and breaks it up into small doses, about 45 minutes long, released each week. It breaks down the walls and limits placed around a movie, and expands upon the plot. Different areas of characters lives and backgrounds are explored, and there is time to include (and kill off) more characters than you would typically in a movie (making the stakes even higher). There are areas of the plot that a movie wouldn’t have the time to touch, such as the issues with Will’s acceptance to Duke, and what’s going on in Brooke’s seemingly perfect life. Without the time limits provided for a movie, there is an incredible amount of backstory and plot twists that the writers can throw at the viewers.
Once again, Wes Craven knocks down the limits of the horror genre by grabbing it by the horns and recreating it for a new audience. What was first done by Scream in terrifying viewers with Ghostface’s phone calls is now reinvented with Scream: The TV Series with FaceTime, texting, YouTube, and other social media. It adds more to the plot, and develops characters and motivations further than ever before, without taking away any of the suspense and terror that, hey, Ghostface might be after you next.
