Scream: Aftermath Recap

Synopsis: Emma gets a mysterious message which leads her and Audrey in search of answers.

Rating: ★★★★☆

So I know I’ve been talking a lot of shit about Scream for being underwhelming and stale. I’m not going back on that assessment yet, but this episode knocked it out of the park.

First of all, I greatly appreciated the way the show focused on Riley’s death. It was sad and everything that happened was saturated with it. Brooke (affectionately) calls Riley a bitch before the funeral because her waterproof mascara is running from crying and she remembers how Riley never needed mascara because she had such great lashes.

Emma has a mini-meltdown while working in the coffee shop when she remembers Riley’s insanely high caffeine tolerance and a study-session where she was bouncing off the walls while the rest of them wanted to die. She laughs, and then cries.

Noah spends the entire night reading his texts with Riley and wishing he had something more tangible left of her, before angrily realizing that even if he did, it wouldn’t really make a difference.

It was impressive and completely realistic and it took me by surprise. Good work everyone.

On the business side of things though, the police (finally) discovered Tyler’s body in his car, somehow convinced themselves that a grisly car wreck cleanly decapitated him and threw the head far enough away to be lost, and managed to have an autopsy that missed the fact that he’s been dead for like a month. And then they wondered why Emma didn’t come to them when she found the yearbook.

The kids saved the day again though, when they discovered Tyler’s missing head in the abandoned hospital where Brandon James was treated for his disfiguration. This was a particularly cool sequence with some stellar cinematography and what was easily the best scare of the season:

Emma mentions that the killer is probably not a woman since it was a man’s voice on the phone, and the iconic Ghostface voice is suddenly heard saying “a voice like this?!” It turns out to be Audrey, using a voice-changing app on her phone to point out that the killer could still be anyone – but it played incredibly well.

I’m also impressed with the TV variation of the nosy reporter. Piper, unlike her movie counterpart Gale Weathers, seems – so far – to be genuinely interested in the truth, and the well-being of the town. Rather than being the antagonist, she’s more of a narrator and outside perspective. This is a smart way to distance her from the original character and use her for exposition whenever it’s needed, but the show is still lacking for antagonism beyond the murders.

However, it seems like we may be about to get some. the voyeur footage that Nina, Will, and Jake were hiding has now accidentally gone viral. We also know that Brooke’s parents are Up To Something.

Her mother has been mysteriously absent and unreachable all season – which may have something to do with the text message demanding “another 100k” that her pointedly evasive father received.

This is a cool new storyline to introduce, and now that the police actually know that Tyler is dead and innocent, the killer is going to have to make another big move.

Body Count: 4