Scream Queens: Lots of laughs with a Side of Blood

Synopsis

A masked killer stalks the night at a snobby sorority with a shady past. But since everyone involved seems to hide a dark secret of some kind, everyone could be the killer. As the body count climbs, so do the slasher film references. And of course, there is no way you could make a show called Scream Queens without one of the originals. Jamie Lee Curtis answers the call, but not necessarily as the pursued victim from Halloween. Her character has a more interesting role to play here. No spoilers, as usual, My Readers, but you can expect loads of gore, lots of eye-roll worthy jokes, and a mystery that lasts almost until the end of the season.

The Good

The storyline of the first season of this show held up throughout the entire season, with the script casting suspicion on everyone equally so that it is almost impossible to pinpoint the killer(s) until close to the end. And since they are in a mask, who is to tell whether there is one killer, two like on Scream, or several? So you can never really rule anyone out, even with average mystery-solving skills. And even when the evildoers begin to reveal themselves, there are still twists and turns to keep viewers guessing right until the very last episode. And the last episode does wrap things up in a neat little bow for us, with room for a sequel, just like a good slasher flick does.

I know that for a show entitled Scream Queens, you would not expect it to be a comedy.

Dragon: I expected more screaming…

But if your sense of humor runs a bit to the dark side, as mine does, you can get quite a few chuckles out of this show. I will warn you, some of the humor does run to the completely ridiculous side, but that is not a bad thing in this case (well most of the time). Some of the deaths even had me cracking up.

This leads me to the third good part. The deaths! There are arms and legs getting chopped off, there is a fryer-related death, there is a tanning bed accident and so much more!

The killer never seems to choose the same method twice, and the effects people did not hold back on the gore! One scene even shows what happens when you poke a body that has been dead for over a month. Amazingly gruesome!

The Bad

Some of the qualities that start off as good do get a bit stale as the show goes on. When I mention the ridiculous jokes not being a bad thing, I mean they aren’t a bad thing at first. Something that you may laugh at the first time and roll your eyes at the third time will become groan-worthy by the tenth time the joke is told. And since the first season has 13 episodes, there is plenty of time to do the jokes and character stereotypes to death. Yes, pun intended.

My other complaint is that some of the characters I wished could have been more fully developed died too soon. And of the ones that did survive, many of them never made it past their stereotypes. Some would get so close to having real personalities, then snap back to the shallow tropes they started out with. It was somewhat infuriating at times. I’m not going to say that none of the characters grew and changed, because that would be a lie, but I wish more of them had.

Overall

This show was campy, but not too bad. While I am not sure I would recommend watching it all in a marathon, it is worth watching through to the end. If you are expecting it to be a masterpiece of story and character, you will be disappointed. So just take it for what it is: part slasher film and part parody. So pop some popcorn, expect plenty of plot twists and not too much depth, and have fun with it.