Scream
Season 2 Episode 8 “Village of the Damned”
Directed by Gil Kenan
Written by Meredith Glynn
Created by Jill E. Blotevogel, Jay Beattie, Dan Dworkin
Starring Willa Fitzgerald, Bex Taylor-Klaus, John Karna, Amadeus Serafini, Carlson Young, Tracy Middendorf, Kiana Lede, Austin Highsmith, Billy Campo, Sean Grandillo, Santiago Segura, Anthony Ruivivar
MTV
Air date: Tuesday, July 19, 2016, 10pm

Last week, Emma (Willa Fitzgerald) continued her pathway towards becoming horror’s all time dumbest final girl, as she again ignored every natural instinct and went with sketchy Eli (Sean Grandillo) to “have some fun” since she’s mad at her boyfriend and his brother, Kieran (Amadeus Serafini). That’s right, the survivor of a serial killer, who is again being chased by another masked killer, while suffering from PTSD, takes off with the weird new kid to be alone in an abandoned house. The house, it turns out, isn’t fully abandoned as there are dead/dying bodies in the bathtub. One is Seth Branson (Billy Campo), Brooke’s former lover and potential suspect. Bad news for him, the house goes up in flames right after Eli puts the moves to Emma. Emma’s teacher Ms. Lang (Austin Highsmith), another potential suspect was also left for dead by the killer, in an attack geared to set up Brooke (Carlson Young). In other news, Audrey (Bex Taylor-Klaus) rescues Noah (John Karna) from a horror death sentence, by interrupting him and Zoe (Kiana Lede) in flagrante delicto.

Spoilers for this week’s episode of Scream.

It’s the 100th birthday for the town, which means the Lakewood carnival; or as Noah describes it, “opening the beaches with a man-eating shark out there.” Audrey awakes to blood dripping on her face and finds 12 DEAD written in blood on her ceiling while “No one will ever forgive you” is written, also in blood on her mirror. Emma and Eli tell the cops they were there, and all seems forgiven despite the whole burnt corpses thing. While searching Ms. Lang’s office, Sheriff Acosta (Anthony Ruivivar) finds her box of audio recordings of the students, one is of his son, Gustavo (Santiago Segura). His comparison of Ed Gein to Michelangelo is concerning to him both as a father and a sheriff.

Audrey has to confess to Emma her tie-in with Piper, or else the killer will continue to be able to manipulate her. She asks Emma to go to the carnival with her. Brooke is ready to throw the Lady of the Lake competition, and shamelessly tries to help Zoe win. I love Brooke this season. We were introduced to her as the stereotypical high school queen B, who usually gets killed after a sex romp. But she’s showed tremendous resilience to make it through the season. Then she gets catfished by the killer pretending to be Jake, only to have Jake’s body land in front of her, and now she’s this broken badass chick. Again, I reiterate, this shows needs to pull a gutsy (no pun intended) move, and killing Emma and replacing her final girl status with Brooke would be a good start… but I know I’m totally living in a dream world there. And seriously, that black dress and dark lipstick… #Brookeforfinalgirl.

Audrey and Emma are interrupted by Eli, and that draws Kieran in for a brawl. It’s Lady of the Lake time, and Brooke steals the show again by getting sh*tfaced and delivering a scathing rant about the town throwing a carnival while psychos walk around murdering people. “Jake would’ve like that speech,” she tells her dad, the Mayor. Just as Brooke is taken home, Emma takes center stage and of course… immediately falls for the killer’s ploys, and then goes running alone into a scary funhouse. She’s texted a video of Kieran with duct tape over his mouth, so naturally she runs in calling his name… DUCT TAPE ON MOUTH!!! C’mon! The killer disguised Kieran as the killer, even taping a knife to his hand in an effort to get Emma to shoot him… Of course, neither ends up with anything more than a scratch. When Audrey finally gets the courage to confess everything to Emma, she walks into Emma listening to the morgue-recorded confession.

Another week… seriously, this was episode 8/10 in the season and we know NOTHING. Last season was a tad predictable, as I guessed Piper Shaw as the killer 5-seconds after seeing her for the first time. This season, I don’t know who the killer, but worse, I don’t really care. There is NO reason to care. Season 1 had the whole Brandon James storyline. Simple and easy, deformed town legend psycho returns to wreak bloody vengeance. This season, it’s just a killer toying with the Lakewood 6 for… reasons! And toying is the operative word. He’s trying to frame, not kill Audrey. He’s trying to drive Emma nuts, not kill her. He could’ve killed Kieran, instead tried to have Emma kill him. We are 8 episodes into a 10 episode season of a HORROR show, and one member of the Lakewood 6 is dead, not a single important character was killed off. Sadly my prediction is that with only two episodes left they’ll leave it as a cliffhanger. Saddest of all is that the show has a lot of potential. Noah and Audrey are great, and Brooke has been the best character all season. It seems totally non-MTV to do such a lame and tame paint by numbers horror girl like Emma, but I guess we’re stuck with her for at least two more episodes.

Scream returns next Tuesday at 10:00pm ET on MTV.

Video

Scream 2×08 Promo “Village of the Damned”

Scream 2×08 “Village of the Damned” – The killer forces Emma through a gauntlet of not-so-fun games during the Lakewood Days Carnival; and Brooke launches an attack on the entire town.