If there’s one thing the horror genre loves more than hot young blondes in trouble (okay, almost as much as hot young blondes in trouble), it’s self-parody. This smart-ass attitude propelled Wes Craven’s original Scream to great success at the box office in the meta-mad ’90s, followed by three proper Scream sequels and a string of self-aware horror films that has resulted in winking triumphs like The Cabin In The Woods as well as winking crap like Hatchet III.
Now Scream is being turned into a TV series in the reboot-mad 2010s, and the first trailer has something to say about that, because it’s too smart for its own goddamn good. Willa Fitzgerald stars as Emma, a high school student whose newfound popularity has strained her relationship with her childhood best friend Aubrey (Bex Taylor-Klaus); Emma, Aubrey, and their classmates come under attack after, in MTV’s words, “a cyber-bullying incident results in a brutal murder, with the shocking violence stirring up memories of a killing spree from the past.”
Speaking of cyber-bullying: when the original Scream was released in 1996, the characters did not yet have social media as we know it today, meaning that their discussion of horror tropes was mostly limited to conversations at keg parties and the like. (And probably the AOL Horror Movies chat room.) Now, even a glimpse at the trailer’s YouTube page reveals thousands of Randy Meeks, commenting on a trailer that comments on a TV series commenting on a movie that commented on horror tropes.
MTV’s Scream: The Series is coming to TVs June 30, and will be offered up for the collective mockery of the internet shortly thereafter.