Scream episode 7 review: In The Trenches

This review contains spoilers.

1.7 In The Trenches

It’s been a snoozy last 2.5 episodes, but Scream ramped it back up in the second half of this week’s instalment, and I for one am happier than Kieran Wilcox opening a brand new shipment of hair product.

Last week, my premature RIP for Will had a question mark attached; this week, though, we can attach several exclamation points. In the last moments of the episode, Emma’s inadvertently homicidal tendencies take their most gruesome toll yet as, running to save Will from the large and rather hazardous-looking piece of farming equipment he’s strapped to, she trips a wire that initiates a mortal injury to Will that no amount of her duct tape can mend. It’s a shocking sequence with which to end the episode, as we are left with the blood-saturated image of Emma in a brutal visual homage to Carrie at the prom.

We’re also left with many questions, most obviously, what led to Will’s awful fate? Are his kidnapping, torture, release, and murder all the work of one killer? Did he initially play a part in any of it? We know he’s just bailed out of his blackmailing scheme with Jake, who threatened (and nearly suffocated) him last week–and who leered, if I recall correctly, at this very piece of death equipment when he was on Will’s farm a few episodes back. We know Brooke’s dad–the former blackmail target–has just found out from Brooke herself that she knows about his shady and possibly fatal dealings with her mom. We know that Will dies right after Emma breaks up with Kieran, who leaves her with an intense (can he do something any other way?) “I know what I want.” And, we know that, on the phone with Emma a few minutes later, Will says he thinks he hears his mom pulling into their drive. I’m thinking that wasn’t his mom.

Before Will’s climactic dispatch, the gang plays a harrowing game of hide-and-seek with the killer, who’s lured them to an old bowling alley with the GPS signal from Will’s phone. Upon their arrival, a welcome sequence of bonkers events commences–Will is found bleeding and hanging, but alive; Jake is stabbed; and, most horrifyingly, Brooke realizes she’s fallen for Jake. Everyone ends up barricaded in a room with Ghosty slashing through the door, which Noah tries to hold shut as the others escape through a back route. Emma, amidst the chaos, finds a cassette player and listens to a tape the killer had led her to. On this tape, her father rants about how her mother had slept with Brandon James.

Which leads us to the rest of the questions we’re left with. Emma’s curiosity about her father’s departure from her life takes on a new dimension–is he even her father at all? And how does this relate to Piper’s apparent personal investment in the case? What about Jake and Noah? They each spend most of this episode acting fishy while trying to play up the fishiness of the other–are they just grasping for scenarios, or does each know more than he lets on? Why was Audrey again MIA when the scary calls started up again? Where’s Mr. Branson? And how many more people have to meet with the misfortune of being Emma’s friend when it’s time for her to accidentally murder again?

I wish I could say I have this all figured out. It seems unlikely now that it’s just one killer, but it would be pretty cool if it were. What seems like a big deadly game could be a lot of murdery coincidences, or even a community-wide Nightmare On Elm Street-type revenge scenario that’s come back to haunt Lakewood. With three episodes left, I’m pumped for the answers we’re going to get, and how we’re going to get them.

Read Holly’s review of the previous episode, Betrayed, here.

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