Bella Thorne helps kick off MTV’s ‘Scream’ adaptation

According to a report from the Wrap, the short preview also gives fans their first good look at the new “Scream” mask. Sure, Scream the TV series is not as a fresh nor as smart as the first big screen Scream was back in 1996.

From left, John Karna, Willa Fitzgerald, and Bex Taylor-Klaus on MTV’s “Scream“.

So check out my review of Scream the TV series. Plus, with just the pilot under its belt, the show does not have much to compare within itself except for the existence of the Scream franchise and any other slasher project it might just rip off under the guise of homage.

With lots of attractive young adults like Bella Thorne being shallow, scantily dressed, scheming, self-centered, cyber-bullied and sometimes at the wrong end of a very sharp object, Scream the show will jolt you every now and then and it’s fun.

There’s even a mythology of a long-ago bloodbath that threatens this picture-perfect privileged small town, and while technology has changed since the 1990s, the opening sequence involving a popular girl who gets stalked and slashed to death in her own home plays no differently when the killer reaches out via text as opposed to Drew Barrymore‘s brick-sized cordless phone.

“You cannot do a slasher movie as a TV series”, one of the teen characters, helpfully well versed in the conventions of the genre, explains near the outset of “Scream”, Dimension and MTV’s attempt to put that theory to the test. Arriving a few months before Fox’s confusingly similar “Scream Queens,” the series does exhibit a playful sense of self-mockery, without really answering that aforementioned conundrum – except, perhaps, that MTV’s expectations will be considerably lower than Fox’s or, for that matter, CBS’ when it tried to mine the same skewered-teenagers niche with “Harper’s Island“. They need to be characters and people that you care about. In fact, she herself might have a personality disorder, as she earnestly asks: “Are you supposed to like your friends in high school?” Those escalate into a kill and secrets begin to become uncovered. This series is the latter, and it makes the ex- feel like the most organic thing to ever hit television.