Review: Scream Queens-“Pilot” and “Hell Week”

If I were writing this review in 1995 (when the flashback of the series’ opening scene is set), I might be pretty excited about Scream Queens. After all, it’s a snarky, satirical look at the sorority life mixed with a little serial killing (courtesy of the Red Devil).

The only problem is that it’s 2015 and everything about this series has been done much better over the past 25 years, beginning with the horror film classic, Scream, and continuing all the way through the modern day with the TV anthology series American Horror Story (at least the spectacular first season anyway). There is literally no new ground Scream Queens breaks and that’s kind of disappointing when you consider the talent behind the show.

Scream Queens is the latest series courtesy of Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuk, and Ian Brennan, the forces behind such popular shows as Nip/Tuck, Glee, and the aforementioned American Horror Story. Like their previous offerings, they populate Scream Queens with a pretty solid cast including Lea Michele (Glee), Emma Roberts (American Horror Story: Coven and Freak Show), Abigail Breslin (Little Miss Sunshine) and a host of other talent comprised of both up and comers and veteran actors. Their biggest coup was scoring the original “scream queen” Jamie Lee Curtis (Halloween) as Dean Munsch, whose main goal is to close the sorority (or at least be a thorn in their side).

When I heard Bat For Lashes “What’s A Girl To Do” over the opening scene, I was pretty excited because it’s a terrific, woefully underplayed song (with a pretty eerie video to boot). Even the first few minutes provide an interesting hook–a sorority girl gives birth in a tub while her sisters abandon her to go back to their party and jam while chasing Waterfalls. When they return, the baby is alive but their sister has bled out and died.

Scream Queens then switches gears to modern day where Chanel (Emma Roberts) abuses her closest sorority sisters while bashing heads (figuratively, not literally…yet, anyway) with Curtis’ Dean Munsch. Toss in a slew of pledges, some egotistical frat boys, the new girl Grace (Skyler Samuels) and her overprotective father (Oliver Hudson), and the “nice guy” barista/school paper editor (Diego Boneta) looking to dig up dirt on the sorority, and you’ve got a pretty large cast of characters to service in an hour long show. The good news is that a majority of these characters have a lot to do.

The bad news is that it’s been done before.

As “Hell Week” began, my wife asked me how many episodes Scream Queens has overall.

“Too many”, I replied.

Save for some interesting scenes (the killing while texting was mildly humorous), Scream Queens seems mired in a past that has long since vanished (oddly enhanced by an 80’s soundtrack). I can see where all involved are approaching it with a “tongue in cheek” attitude and that’s definitely the way to go with a series like this. However, there’s nothing of any substance here to keep viewers (at least this one) entertained on a weekly basis. To think that this show has enough steam to make it to a half dozen episodes is wishful thinking, but it’s slated to have more than double that!

Because Scream Queens borrows from every trope in the book and fails to truly put an interesting spin on them, these queens amount to little more than peasants eking out a hoarse whisper.

Scream Queens grade: D

Review: ‘The Pact’ (2012)

I miss the days when I could wander around my local video store, stumbling upon offbeat horror films. You know the kind, the ones that never gained a mass release or went straight to VHS (and later, DVD). With these films, you ended up playing horror roulette. Maybe you’d luck out and it would be great; maybe you’d end up feeling as if you killed two hours you’d never get back.

Thanks to Netflix and their pretty generous array of obscure horror titles, I’ve discovered quite a few films that I’ve added to my queue, tucked away and saved for those special nights. These are movies that made their bones on the film festival circuit then got lost in the shuffle, hoping to find life anew in the “virtual bin” of the Netflix genre section. This is where I stumbled upon The Pact, and tonight, I plucked it from obscurity, spun the chamber and pulled the trigger.

Upon the news of her mother’s death, estranged daughter Annie (Caity Lotz who currently portrays Sara Lance–aka the Black Canary–on CW’s Arrow) reluctantly returns to her childhood home after speaking to her sister, Nichole (Agnes Bruckner, The Bold and the Beautiful, 24). Almost immediately after conversing, Nichole mysteriously vanishes. Annie arrives to an empty house but chalks her sister’s disappearance up to normal behavior. Claiming that her family runs away from their problems instead of facing them, she tells her cousin Liz (who is watching Nichole’s daughter) that Nichole will eventually return.

After attending her mother’s funeral, she invites Liz and her niece back to the house, claiming that she doesn’t want to be alone. Late at night, when everyone is asleep, Liz stirs when she hears a strange noise, then also disappears after seeing a shadowy figure in her room. Annie wakes to find Liz gone and that’s when hell breaks loose. An unseen force tosses her about like a rag doll, bouncing her off the walls and causes her to drive the butcher’s knife she’s wielding into a wall. She leaves, then remembers her niece is in the house. Annie rushes back, scoops her up and whisks her away, unharmed.

Annie seeks the help of Creek (Casper Van Dien, Starship Troopers, Sleepy Hollow), a local lawman who agrees to aid her but reminds her that she’s also a suspect in the disappearance of the two women. Annie eventually begins to unravel the mystery which culminates in both a supernatural explanation and very real physical threat from a serial killer that once preyed upon women along the west coast.

The Pact continuously straddles the line between ghost story and murder mystery and, for the most part, does so successfully. Anchored by a terrific performance by Caity Lotz, the film offers some good jolts and is pretty well written, acted, and directed. That said, it isn’t without flaws.

There are some massive leaps in the plot which take you inexplicably from one scene to another without anything to link them. Annie suddenly goes to visit an old high school acquaintance who is blind but has the gift of being able to communicate with spirits. Maybe I missed it but there was no mention of that visit prior to Annie’s arrival. Also, the niece character is sort of forgotten for a long stretch of the film. Odds are she’s with social services but I don’t recall anyone talking about it. Finally, the connection between the serial killer and Annie works but only if you discount the fact that she never knew who her father was but still has a cousin (and her mother only had one sibling that we know of who probably never sired a child given the circumstance). It’s just a guess, but I would chalk many (if not all) of these issues up to expanding the film from an 11 minute short to a feature with a running time of little over an hour and a half.

Writer/director Nicholas McCarthy has crafted a nifty little thriller that is worth a watch on a cold winter’s night. If you can get beyond the somewhat stilted dialogue (which, to the film’s credit, there’s little of and works thanks to the performances) and the fondness of too many shots of an empty hallway, you could definitely do a lot worse than The Pact.

The Pact rating: B-

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