Scream
Season 2 Episode 1 “I Know What You Did Last Summer”
Directed by Brian Dannelly
Written by Michael Gans & Richard Register
Created by Jill E. Blotevogel, Jay Beattie, Dan Dworkin
Starring Willa Fitzgerald, Bex Taylor-Klaus, John Karna, Amadeus Serafini, Carlson Young, Tracy Middendorf, Tom Maden
MTV
Air date: Monday, May 30th, 2015, 11pm

First off, that title right! Last season Emma Duval (Willa Fitzgerald) had her world turned upside down as she was targeted by a masked psychopath obsessed her and her friends and family. Turns out the Lakewood town boogeyman Brandon James, had a fling with Emma’s mom Maggie (Tracy Middendorf), producing an orphaned offspring. That offspring disguised herself as internet blogger and reporter Piper Shaw (Amelia Rose Blaire). Emma watched as several of her friends, including her boyfriend, were brutally murdered before delivering the final death blow to Piper herself. Tonight marks Emma’s return from a recovery retreat, and she’s looking to relax with new boyfriend Kieran (Amadeus Serafini), and her friends Audrey (Bex Taylor-Klaus), Noah (John Karna), Brooke (Carlson Young) and Jake (Tom Maden). That’s way too many friends for a sequel… and if you remember Randy’s rules from the film version of Scream 2, then you know sequels are always bloodier with many more victims. Luckily for us; not so much for Emma, there’s a new killer stalking Lakewood, happy to see her return.

Spoilers for Scream ahead…

Noah opens the show will a recap of last season. I’m scared… Randy dies in Scream 2. And as we are reminded, his BFF Audrey was seen in a last minute cliffhanger hiding letters from Piper hinting that she was the second masked person. Speaking of Scream 2, kudos to the opening bit. Audrey is closing up shop at the movie theater and is ready to meet Noah for Emma’s welcome home party. But Audrey is getting mysterious texts from “Her Conscience” that are starting to freak her out a bit. She gets pranked by some students, but the jokes on them as she self-defense stabs some poor schnook all while his camera rolled. Just like in season 1, Audrey is tearing up the net.

Noah has been running a podcast about the murders while Emma was away, and someone knows what Audrey did and they’re calling her out. Could the podcast be recruiting would-be psychopaths? After all, have you checked the comments section on Facebook… it gets scary and brutal there. Noah tracks the podcast comments and finds that the prank was set up by a third prankster who wasn’t present.

Brooke and Jake are now a couple, and celebrate Emma’s return with a PG-13 nighttime swim in the high school pool. Seriously it’s still shocking these two made it out of season 1. After an argument (of course), Jake tries to prove himself to Brooke, but steps in a bear trap and we finally seem to meet the real killer who promptly fades Jake to black with a baseball bat.

Emma celebrates in her own PG-13 way, but her rekindling with Kieran stirs up old wounds… literally, the stab wounds she inflicted last year. She dreams a yellow shaded dream of little kids on a farm ripping up pig entrails. After the awkward evening with Kieran, she heads back to school and in psychology class the exciting young teacher immediately gets them rolling on a dream analysis discussion that feels cut and pasted from Nightmare on Elm Street, so much so that they name drop it and Freddy within seconds. I’m totally fine with the continual homages to the late Wes Craven by the way. Noah eyes a new girl, Zoe (Kiana Lede) while the girls eye a “creepy” new boy (Santiago Segura). It should be noted that on MTV all the creepy people are insanely attractive. The end result of the class is a dream journal project, and with Emma having colored visions and dreams, expect that to become central to the plot as we move forward. With Emma out for so long, she asks Zoe for help catching up which immediately puts Zoe in the line of sight of any mask wearing knife wielding maniacs.

Noah forces Audrey to go to the cops after the constant texts and calls. Audrey, like Emma feels Noah may be inciting the pranks and threats by keeping the horrors of Piper Shaw’s murder spree alive through his podcast. The creepy guy, who is actually the new sheriff’s son has a different perspective, relating Lakewood’s past to horror comics where there are a series of issues with a story and twists and then that story ends and another series comes out. Audrey goes to Noah for help and his theory is that the prank organizer from the comments section is the harassing texter and Piper Shaw’s accomplice. Audrey is hiding the letters that show some type of connection to Shaw so she shoots down any accomplice theories.

Emma confronts her demons by appearing on his podcast. She peruses the murder-wall and there it is, the farm from her dreams… which belongs to Troy James (Brandon’s brother). Poor Jake wakes in the barn, still with the bear trap in place, and meets a bloody end via scythe aka THE COOLEST WEAPON EVER! In a jiffy, Emma and Brooke are at the barn and find nothing, but the lights are flickering in the spooky farmhouse across the street. Of course, you check it out! Emma finds a ton of news images of her life and turns to see a hooded figure as episode one comes to an end.

This was fine for a reintroduction to the characters and plot, but was overall an underwhelming episode. They stayed true to the Scream 2 roots, even lifting entire scenes, like the movie theatre, and movie within a movie trick. They delved into the new plot surrounding Noah’s podcast and Emma’s dreams, but also focused a lot on Audrey’s connection to Piper, which appears to be a misunderstanding. The series premiere last year opening with a Drew Barrymore-style death scene. I was hoping for something along those lines, but instead we got one death of a carry-over character and Jake’s scenes were too far apart for any real tension to build. I will never complain about death by scythe, so good job there!

The previews make season 2 look like it will fulfill the horror sequel promise, and that’s more blood, guts, and gore with a much higher body count. They better up their game for next week. Scream returns next Monday night, June 6th at 11:00 EST on MTV.

Video

Scream (Season 2) | ‘Trust Nothing’ Official Promo | MTV

Watch the first footage of Season 2 of Scream, premiering Monday, May 30th on MTV.