I’m starting my reviews for Scream a little late in the game, but at the same time the series is starting to pick up a little late in the game as well. I have had some qualms with this season of Scream. The main characters haven’t been as engaging as in the first season, Emma in particular was becoming a bit problematic. You would think that going through the horrors of last season she would be a little bit more understanding with her mom or her boyfriend but she’s been very quick to turn against them over any little thing. Kieran seems stuck on brooding mode and what is up with that beard? Can you really call it a beard? Seems more like an overzealous goatee.
The why hasn’t been clearly defined this season either. Last season we knew that it was because of Brandon James and someone making the kids of the people he grew up pay for their parents sins. This season it just seems like someone with a serial killer fetish is stalking the Lakewood 6, the main teenage characters that survived last season. But why? Is there another secret that their parents covered up. Is there still some secret left to uncover from the Lakewood 6 that didn’t come out last season. The only one that had a clear reason for having a target on their back is Audrey. Since the beginning of this season Audrey has been trying to keep the killer of this season from revealing her involvement with Piper. Last week it was finally revealed to Emma via an email that contained an audio file where Audrey confesses she brought Piper to Lakewood. This week shows the fallout of this reveal plus a little clarity as to the why this is happening.
This weeks episode seems to go back to its season one roots where the gang discovers some key pieces of information with some gruesome deaths mixed in. The episode opens with Emma killing Kieran, Noah and Audrey in her kitchen with a knife. This turns out to be a very bad nightmare but when she wakes up she finds herself in the kitchen gripping a knife. Emma only explains to Kieran that she has dreams where her hands are bloody but she’s never actually sleep walked and grabbed a knife. This could be foreshadowing that Emma’s fractured psyche could be brining up a violent side, a side that could lead her to murder. And as much as I liked fight club I hope they don’t go that route where Emma has two fully functioning personalities, the bad Emma becomes active when the good Emma goes to sleep but good Emma has no recollection of what bad Emma does. Brooke wakes up with Stavo in her bed looking at her. She comments that him doing that makes him creepy and that’s why no one likes him. He asks her if she likes him and she says she does because he tells her nice things and smells good. To Stavo that’s creepy and you can believe him because he’s pretty creepy himself. How creepy you ask? Well besides the fact that he likes to draw living people dead in very detailed fashion, he’s got a gnarly spine tattoo running up his back and he also steals lipstick from Brooke. That’s textbook creepiness right there.
At school the rift between Emma and Audrey starts to manifest itself. They get into an argument and after Emma tells Audrey she blames her for everything that happened with Piper she shoves Audrey into some lockers. Before this dustup Noah gets a little piece from Emma too but thankfully it wasn’t as bad as with Audrey. Noah has always been there for his two friends and I’m glad they didn’t tear Emma and Noah apart. She needs him more than ever to get to the bottom of this mystery and sure enough Noah gets on the case to figure out who sent Emma the audio file. After all this happens Emma finally gets to her locker and when she opens it she finds a cassette from a recorder hanging from a chunk of long hair and on her locker mirror are the words PLAY ME written in lipstick, like maybe the one Stavo took from Brooke, hmmm. Noah and Audrey have their own argument about the email that Emma received. Since the recording was a conversation she had with Noah in his room, she wants to know why he was recording her. Noah says that it was done by accident but we know that when that conversation happened Noah deliberately recorded and saved it. So why the lie, Noah? Audrey also accuses Noah’s girlfriend Zoe since the only people that have access to his room are his mom, Audrey and Zoe with the only one obvious suspect who would leak the audio file would be Zoe. Emma and Kieran listen to the locker cassette which ends up being a recorded conversation that Ms. Lang and Emma had at the coffee shop where Lang was offering her help and Emma told her to back off. Ms. Lang makes additional comments about how hostile Emma is, again highlighting her violent side. This makes Kieran and Emma focus on Ms. Lang so they decide to visit her in the hospital.
At the hospital they manage to get into Ms. Lang’s room and when she comes to she starts to freak out when she sees Emma. When Emma and Kieran are talking about how strange Lang’s reaction was to seeing Emma they overhear a delivery man dropping off flowers at the front desk to Ms. Lang’s room. The flowers are daisies. This is a shock since daisies are pretty much Brandon James calling card since he used to call Emma’s mom Daisy. Kieran goes over and takes the card from the daisies and its from Piper. This is one of those incredibly impossible moments that are only able to happen in horror movies. How is it possible that on the exact day, let alone the exact time that Emma is in the hospital the flowers were going to be dropped off. What if Emma had decided to go the next day she heard the tape recording? What if she went later in the day when deliveries are less likely to happen? Anyway, this only makes Emma and Kieran to double down on their investigation of Ms. Lang. Kieran goes back to her room and takes her house keys.
We also get some back story on Stavo when Maggie shows up to tell Sheriff Acosta about the dead bodies from the house fire. Acosta tells Maggie that when they were in Phoenix his wife died. Shortly after that Stavo and one of his friends were playing with a gun. Gun goes off and kills Stavo’s friend. By the time police showed up the friend was dead, but the real shocker was Stavo’s reaction. He was cool as a cucumber as Acosta says. It was believed that the kid was probably bleeding out for some time before help was contacted. So Stavo probably let his friend bleed out so he could experience his death and use it in his artwork. Again, creepiness is off the charts with this guy. The other odd development happens when Noah is investigating the email that sent the audio file. Audrey still believes its Zoe. When Zoe shows up at Noah’s house while he’s running a trace, her and Audrey get into a weird battle over Noah. Zoe believes that Audrey has been getting in the way of them hooking up and Audrey believes Zoe is jealous of their relationship. This odd love triangle feels really out of place and weird. Noah and Audrey have never shown any romantic inclinations towards each other and sure an episode ago Noah reveals that he had feelings for Audrey but all this really feels forced to create drama where there shouldn’t be. Noah and Audrey work better as a platonic friendship. Noah uncovers who sent the email and it turns out to be registered to, cue reveal music, Zoe. What? Zoe says it wasn’t her it was the one armed man. Not really but she does say it wasn’t her, obviously she’s being framed. Noah believes her and defends her from Audrey who then leaves. This act of solidarity really puts Zoe in the mood and Noah finally gets laid. But since this is a horror movie setting that means Noah will probably die soon. Remember one of the rules from the original Scream movie that all horror movies follow is to never have sex when there is a killer on the loose.
Back to Emma and Kieran’s investigation of Ms. Lang. They break into her house to see if they can uncover anything suspicious, Kieran’s exact words as they start searching the house. How do you know something is suspicious? Is it labeled as such? As they are checking out the house they find a picture hanging upside down on the wall. Now that has to be suspicious right, unless its some hipster way of hanging pictures. The picture is a group photo of young girls. The names listed at the bottom show Piper and Lang right next to each other. The picture is from a closed down foster home called Blessed Sister. It of course has a dark history. Before it was a foster home it was an insane asylum and the reason the foster home was closed down was because of an abuse scandal. All this comes from the walking library of weird, Noah. After scoring a major touchdown on his first time he’s talking with Zoe in a fort, nerd, and they are tossing around theories about how the killer would know about the audio file to begin with and how to steal it from Zoe to frame her. Noah finally figures it out that the camera he picked up from a storage unit that was supposed to give him evidence of who the accomplice was is actually bugged. The killer has been listening to him this entire time and thats why he knew about the recording. While he’s saying this he’s practically yelling at the camera saying he’s figured it out. I was thinking to myself, Noah just stop talking and destroy the camera immediately. He practically hand painted a target on his back. After that he gets the call from Emma asking about Blessed Sister.
The gang decides to go to Blessed Sister to see what more they can find about Piper and Lang. When they show up they find a rave in full force inside the foster home. Do people still have raves in abandoned facilities? Isn’t that so 2005? Audrey gets a killer call saying that she needs to get to Blessed Sister if she wants to save Noah since he’s the next one to go after figuring out the bugged camera. At the rave Emma and the gang find out that it’s a masquerade called Face the Mask. Emma also finds out that the party was supposedly setup by her and Audrey, the invite has their names as top billing. Another rule to never break in a horror move setting is to never split up, but thats what the gang does. Zoe and Noah go to turn off the power, since turning off the lights with a possible killer on the loose is a really good idea. Kieran makes a call to the police so they can come and get everyone out of the foster home. Emma runs into Hayley, the girl involved in the killer prank on Audrey from the season premiere. Hayley gives Emma some cryptic responses about who is behind the party. She tells her that her special friend is the one who set it up. She disappears into the crowd and while Emma is looking for her she runs into Audrey. We go back to Hayley for a bit where she’s talking to her special friend. A cloaked figure that doesn’t talk and their back is turned to us. Hayley walks up to the figure trying to coax a reaction out of them. The camera turns as she pulls the Brandon James mask over his face. She decides that since he isn’t going to talk she’s going to find another way to get a reaction from him. She gets down on her knees, but before she can get busy the killer pulls out a knife and starts to stab her. Her screams are mixed in with the loud music and no one pays attention to screams at a serial killer theme party. It reminded me of the myth that the scream heard in the rollercoaster song is the scream of a woman being murdered outside the recording booth. Back to Emma and Audrey they decide to band together to look for Noah after Audrey tells her he’s next on the kill list. On their journey through the foster home they find pictures of Piper. They follow them like creepy breadcrumbs to a room where Piper’s dead body is sitting in a chair. All this leads them to believe that the killer wanted them together at the foster home all along, which is another scenario only possible in horror movie land. How did the killer know that Emma and Audrey would find each other in a foster home full of ravers and that they would end up finding the dead Piper room? This discovery though leads them to the conclusion that since they are responsible for killing Piper someone is out for revenge.
More evidence that Stavo is the main suspect is after Hayley’s murder you see Stavo in the middle of the crowd without a mask. He’s the only one without a mask. It could be that after killing Hayley he took off the Brandon James getup. Also he ends up meeting Brooke in a hotel room like how she used to meet Mr. Branson. In the room Brooke says that it was her mothers special room. Stavo then adds, for her special friends. When the rave gets cleared out by the cops they find Hayley’s body hanging over the DJ booth under the Face the Mask banner. When the sheriff sees her body he calls her a special friend. Theres that expression again.
The ninth episode of Scream gave a little bit of clarity to the why of the killings. It looks to be revenge for what happened to Piper. But if that’s the case then why was Ms. Lang attacked? And what connection does Stavo have to Ms. Lang or Piper? It could be two different parties crossing paths. Ms. Lang was trying to get revenge for Piper and that clashed with Stavo’s plan, whatever that may be and all this focus on Lang is to shift focus away from him. Which then means this episode didn’t give us much clarity after all. One character that was completely missing this episode was Eli, Kieran’s cousin. What was he up to besides breaking into peoples homes and watching them sleep. Also missing for several episodes is the whole pig farm thing. They’ve only mentioned that the farm belonged to Brandon James’ brother and that Emma spent a lot of time there when she was little but no reason why she’s having memories of that place now. So who are your suspects for who’s wearing the mask and wielding the knife. The Scream killers always operate in two’s like the Sith, one mastermind and one accomplice. My money is on Stavo and Eli, Stavo being the mastermind and Eli being the accomplice. I think Ms. Lang just got caught in the crossfire and posed no real physical threat to the Lakewood 6.
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