Scream Queens: Ghost Stories Review

This Scream Queens review contains spoilers.

Scream Queens Season 1 Episode 9

In keeping with the vernacular which is Scream Queens metier, I feel it is fitting that I sum up my feelings about the show thusly: You guys, I can’t even.

Last week I believed the show to have found its footing. Yes, I also railed against its perfidious racism and tonal oddities, but still — the plot seemed to be clicking into place. Or so I thought.

I have never been more incorrect. While the rapid-fire delivery of Murphy and Falchuk’s razor-sharp infectives has never been more ably managed by a cast, the whodunnit at this point is hampered by one major issue: No one cares.

To be clear, from the outset it was apparent that Scream Queens was trying to be a sort of Scream-era meta send-up of the horror genre. Occasionally, it succeeded in this. However Murphy and Falchuk already have another franchise cornering this market quite nicely in the American Horror Story series — not that they know it.

The problem here is that they are trying to deliberately create camp — that’s impossible to do. I could spend hours discussing why this is impossible, but Susan Sontag already did, so go read her stuff maybe.  Suffice to say in its love and sincerity, AHS naturally succeeds where the artifice and cleverness of Scream Queens fails absolutely.

Is the mystery of the two babies in the bathtub complex? Sure, they’ve certainly  managed to make it so over the course of the season. But at this point, it is incidental. The stakes can’t get very much higher than life and death and yet, with thirteen students murdered (THIRTEEN) I have fantasies of the empty sorority house, blissfully freed from Emma Roberts’ shocking statements and Zayday’s hats.

Ideally, I should be fearful that characters are being killed off with such abandon each week. I shouldn’t be looking forward to it the way I do a good egg sandwich and satisfying morning bowel movement.

Even the brilliance of Jamie Lee Curtis could not dull the ache of this week’s installment — especially in the light of Boone’s awkward return to seduce Zayday. Would that they were all stabbed so that they very talented actors involved could move on to less confusing and ultimately ugly projects.