I want to like you so badly, Scream, but you’re making it so goddamn difficult.
This summer, MTV is unveiling a TV adaptation of the beloved horror-comedy franchise, and though one of the trailers, slaughtering the other MTV stalwarts, did make me crack up, Entertainment Weekly’s reveal of the “updated” mask the series’ killer will don is just one of the most dispiriting things I’ll have to report on in a while.
Fans of the franchise will only need a cursory glance at the new facepiece to see what I’m talking about – the thing just isn’t scary, at all. It looks like a mix between the generic masks worn by rampagers in The Purge, a porcelain Phantom of the Opera face and something you might find in Christian Grey’s Red Room of Pain.
Executive producer Jaime Paglia felt the need to describe the new Ghostface mask:
“It evokes some of the Jason hockey mask and the white Michael Myers mask, but it’s still first and foremost evocative of the Scream mask. It’s sort of a reinvention while also paying homage.”
As for Wes Craven, who’s still involved with the MTV series, he had this to say:
“The new mask is cool and scary and takes the series into a new direction. It also ties into the story, which I won’t give away.”
That Craven, who created the series, is on board with the new mask could just be a by-product of his investment in the series, but I really hope that there’s a creative origin story going on here that’s going to pay off when we actually see Scream. Initial impressions, it must be said, aren’t promising.
Scream premieres on MTV on June 30.
What starts as a YouTube video going viral, soon leads to problems for the teenagers of Lakewood and serves as the catalyst for a murder that opens up a window to the town’s troubled past.
