Scream Queens
Scream Queens, Fox’s hyperactive slasher movie send-up/homage, has a lot of style but isn’t quite the killer it intends to be.
Bitchy Kappa Kappa Tau sorority president Chanel (Emma Roberts) lords over her sycophants at Wallace University. Her nemesis Dean Munsch (original scream queen Jamie Lee Curtis) tries to cripple Kappa by forcing them to accept any new pledge who wants to join. That leaves Kappa mostly with a stock supply of “misfits” but also the sensible Grace (Skyler Samuels), who wants to join Kappa to feel close to her late mother. In spite of the objections of her overprotective Dad, Wes (Oliver Hudson).
Chanel had been implicated in an attack that disfigured the previous Kappa president. A figure clad in the school’s “Red Devil” mascot costume stalks Kappa and pretty soon gets to killing various sorority girls and other bystanders. Munsch tries to contain the story, but Grace teams up with student journalist/possible stalker Pete (Diego Boneta) to work on an expose. Are the killings related to an incident (shown in gruesome flashback) that rocked Kappa 20 years earlier? Well, duh.
Scream Queens, the latest creation from Ryan Murphy, is working a lot of contradictory impulses. The show uses a classic slasher movie set-up (a brutal killer gleefully murders a sorority full of nasty bitches) in order to twist it with irony. But the ironic elements sometimes don’t quite come through, often buried in an avalanche of typically Murphy-ian pop culture-drenched snarky dialogue and a plethora of outlandish production details. All wrapped in an incongruously retro pop soundtrack.
The Scream Queens story itself is solid enough. A dark secret from years earlier (a slasher movie must), a 20th anniversary (killers love anniversaries) and a whole passel of shady characters who might have motives to kill. The first two hours set all that in motion fairly effectively. Grace is a sympathetic presence and is written with depth and spark. Samuels handles the earnestness of the character without descending into mawkishness, keeping her a dynamic presence and plot driver. And landing Curtis was a major coup. Her notorious past with the genre adds subtext to her scenes and her line readings as the bitter, boozy and utterly randy dean are the show’s secret weapon. Curtis is a godsend for Scream Queens and makes the most of every second she’s onscreen.
But too often the characters are left fighting against the writing. Roberts is great delivering Chanel’s acidic putdowns, but one gets the impression that the flashes of humanity that peek out of the performance are all the actress’s invention. Those are good instincts. Scream Queens would be better served dialing down the transgression-baiting, defiantly “un-PC” one-liners and injecting a little more emotional realism. Because the show’s trappings could overwhelm it. The ultra-luxe Kappa house could exist nowhere in the real world, the fashions are insane and Wallace University looks more like a high end gated community than a college campus. The reliance on conveying info via text messages seen on cell phones is irksome.
And yet. There’s something compelling about Scream Queens. A well-told murder mystery is always welcome and the first two episodes set up the bones of that effectively. The second episode ended with an intriguing twist. There’s a lot of visual style at work. Even if some of the trappings are hard to believe, the show looks great and zips along smoothly. There are well-executed visual gags and bits of physical comedy that provide welcome variety. And when the writers come up with a truly inspired bit of bitchy dialogue, it lands with real impact.
The ensemble cast is packed with familiar names and appealing new faces. Hudson’s Wes hasn’t had much more to do than be worried about Grace, but in a couple brief scenes, he and Samuels forged a believable father/daughter bond. The great Niecy Nash is a welcome addition as a hilariously inept security guard. Glen Powell gets some of the episodes’ best laughs as clueless campus lothario Chad, entangled with both Chanel and Munsch. Nasim Pedrad scores some chuckles as stuck-in-the-90s national Kappa president Gigi.
Other faces aren’t quite as well used, at least in the first two installments. Joe Jonas is onboard as Chad’s best friend, who’s harboring more than one secret but hasn’t quite gelled yet. It’s unclear where Murphy is going with the death-obsessed neck-brace-sporting mess played by his Glee star Lea Michele. Keke Palmer is thus far sadly underused as Grace’s new best friend. If you dislike pop star Ariana Grande, the first episode is for you.
It’s hard to say whether or not to recommend Scream Queens. There’s a lot of promising pieces and as the plot gets more tangled, it’s potentially quite addictive. But the writing need more balance and possibly a little more sincerity to make the irony- and pop culture-drenched dialogue land more convincingly. Humor based on a variety of slurs, bodily functions and swipes at low hanging cultural fruit will run out of steam pretty damn quickly. And the show needs a little more awareness of which side of the “imitation vs. satire” line it’s working.
There’s enough there to not give up on Scream Queens just yet. But it doesn’t come together enough to make a viewer want to commit to the whole season. Take it week-by-week and use your judgment.
Originally published at thunderalleybcpcom.ipage.com on September 23, 2015.
