TV
With slasher films being seen as a fad of the 1980s, the Scream franchise was said to have revitalised the horror genre in a way that was both satirical and enjoyable for teenagers in the 1990s. MTV’s Scream: TV Series is the television adaptation of the popular franchise and, in several instances, pays tribute to the original film by updating iconic scenes to fit our digital age. In doing so, the show is able to easily maintain the interest of its target group — teenagers.
When Nina Patterson (Bella Thorne) and Tyler O’Neill (Max Lloyd-Jones) release a YouTube-esque video of classmate, Audrey Jensen (Bex Taylor-Klaus), kissing another girl, the plot for the show begins to fall into place. After releasing the video, Patterson rejects O’Neill’s sexual advances and returns home, where she is brutally murdered by a person wearing the infamous Scream mask. Her murder affects not only the whole town but also her group of friends, especially protagonist Emma Duval (Willa Fitzgerald), whose father was the sole survivor of a past and eerily similar killing spree. With an inappropriate teacher-student relationship, classes where students don’t actually learn anything, cheating boyfriends and more murders, the first episode of Scream: TV Series sets the audience up for an MTV series that lures a younger demographic.
Since the show’s storyline is inspired by the foolproof plot of the 1996 original film, there’s an entertainment factor to the television adaptation that keeps the audience engaged with the characters and the storyline. While there were scenes that felt overly dramatic and induced some eye-rolling, it was hard to discern whether those moments were attempting to take on the satire featured in the Scream franchise. Despite the audience’s inability to figure out if James Travis is following Scream’s humorous approach or if the dialogue and rigidness of the actors are intended as serious, there’s a self-awareness to Scream: TV Series that sets the show apart from other teen dramas.
While Scream: TV Series offers a first episode that isn’t as impressive as its opening scene (which pays tribute to Drew Barrymore), there is potential for the show to successfully develop into a popular series.