Review: MTV’s modern take on Scream

Raigen Hoffner, Howler Staff Writer

MTV’s Scream is a new and modernized version of the Halloween classic Scream from 1996. Scream’s first season was released on June 30, 2015, and the last season was released on July 8, 2019. 

There are six main characters in the first two seasons. The characters are Emma Duval (Willa Fitzgerald), Brooke Maddox (Carlson Young), Audrey Jensen (Bex-Taylor Klaus), Kieran Wilcox (Amadeus Serafini), Noah Foster (John Karna), Will Belmont (Connor Well) and Jake Fitzgerald (Tom Madden). 

To keep fans interested, in season three a whole new cast comes in with a whole new story. 

Scream has three seasons and was canceled in 2019 after the release of the third season. It has a 4.4 star rating and a 61% overall on Rotten Tomatoes, season one has a 52%, season two has a 92% and season three has a 40% rating. 

You can watch these episodes on Netflix, MTV, VH1. The genres for this show are Anthology, Slasher, Teen Drama, Horror and Mystery. 

Scream Season 1-2 Summary 

Scream is set in a small town called Lakewood in 2015. Suddenly the calm, small town becomes filled with fear due to a spree of murders on multiple high school students. These murders resemble the same murder spree that happened just 20 years before. 

Emma Duval and her friends, who are called the Lakewood six, find themselves stuck in the middle of this murder mystery and have to watch people they know die around them which causes much mental trauma for many of the characters. 

The Lakewood six need to find a way to end these killings.

Scream Season 3 Summary

In season three of Scream, they rebooted the show introducing a new cast with a new storyline. 

The main character Deion Elliot (RJ Cyler) and his friends Kym (Keke Palmer), Liv (Jessica Sula), Beth ( Giorgia Whigham), Amir (C.J. Wallace), and Manny (Giullian Yao Gioiello) are being tormented by a killer in a Scream mask. 

The killer tells Deion he needs to find the truth inside of him and tell everyone his secret to make these killings stop.

They need to find this killer before another person they know dies.

Spoilers for MTV’s Scream 

In seasons one and two of Scream, the show starts off with the murder of Nina Patterson (Bella Thorne), a student at George Washington high school. This murder made the school frantic because Nina was one of the most popular mean girls. 

Before Nina was murdered, she leaked a video of Audrey kissing her girlfriend Rachel (Sosie Bacon), and this forces Audrey to come out as bisexual against her will. 

Days after Nina’s death Audrey’s girlfriend was also killed. This is when the town starts to get suspicious. Just 20 years before these new murders, there was a killer named Bradon James who went on a rampage killing multiple high school students.

Brandon wore a mask because he was severely deformed. His mask looked like a more realistic version of the classic 1996 Scream mask.

Brandon James was obsessed with a girl named Daisy, who ends up being Emma Duval’s mother. Daisy changed her name to Margaret Duval (Tracy Middendorf) to try to leave her past behind her.

Changing her name apparently wasn’t enough to hide from the history of Brandon James. 

Emma eventually started getting weird packages just like Margaret got when Brandon was obsessed with her. 

Emma started getting weird calls from the killer asking her to play games. If she didn’t play this game another one of her friends would die.

Just like any other teen drama, there is a mysterious guy, Keiran Wilcox, that becomes Emma’s love interest. This turns out to be the worst decision she has ever made because he was one of the killers. 

Keiran was only one of two killers. The second killer was Piper (Amelia Rose Blaire), who runs a very popular true-crime podcast. One of the biggest twists in this season was that Piper is also Emma’s half-sister and her dad is Brandon James. 

Piper is killed by Audrey and Emma but Kerian was killed by another person in the Brandon James mask. 

In the end, the killers had an astounding kill count of 10.

The victims were Emma’s ex-boyfriend Will Belmont, Deputy Roberts, Sheriff Clark Hudson, Grayson Pfeiller, Tyler O’Neill, Nina Patterson, Rachel Murray, Dara Aiden, Brett Keener, Riley Marra, Grayson Pfeiffer, Kerian Wilcox and Piper Shaw. 

In the end, Emma gets another weird call from the killer.

Kerian and Piper are both dead, so there may still be another murder out there but we’ll never know.