Like “American Horror Story,” this latest hourlong from Ryan Murphy is designed to reboot every time it starts a new season, which will make it easy for it to kill off characters every week.
Fox describes “Scream Queens” thusly:
The girls of Kappa House are dying for new pledges. SCREAM QUEENS is a new killer comedy-horror series from Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuk and Ian Brennan, the Emmy- and Golden Globe Award-winning executive producers of GLEE and "American Horror Story."Wallace University is rocked by a string of murders. Kappa House, the most sought-after sorority for pledges, is ruled with an iron fist (in a pink glove) by its Queen Bitch, CHANEL OBERLIN (Emma Roberts, "American Horror Story: Freak Show," "Scream 4").
But when anti-Kappa DEAN MUNSCH (Jamie Lee Curtis, "Halloween," "A Fish Called Wanda," "True Lies") decrees that sorority pledging must be open to all students, and not just the school's silver-spooned elite, all hell is about to break loose, as a devil-clad killer begins wreaking havoc, claiming one victim, one episode at a time.
Part black comedy, part slasher flick, SCREAM QUEENS is a modern take on the classic whodunit, in which every character has a motive for murder... or could easily be the next blood-soaked casualty.
SCREAM QUEENS stars Emma Roberts, Jamie Lee Curtis, Emmy Award and Golden Globe Award nominee Lea Michele (GLEE), Academy Award nominee Abigail Breslin ("Little Miss Sunshine," "Zombieland," "August: Osage County"), Nasim Pedrad ("Saturday Night Live"), Oliver Hudson ("Nashville," "Rules of Engagement"), Skyler Samuels ("American Horror Story: Coven"), Keke Palmer ("Akeela and the Bee," "Masters of Sex"), newcomer Billie Lourd, Diego Bonita ("Rock of Ages"), Glen Powell ("The Expendables 3"), Lucien Laviscount ("Episodes"), Niecy Nash ("Getting On," "The Soul Man"), pop superstar and actor Nick Jonas ("Kingdom") and Grammy Award nominee and actress Ariana Grande.
… This mean-spirited and imbecilic cartoon feels concocted by 14-year-olds sifting through their ugliest tweets. …
... Ms. Curtis’s winking, merry performance is its own self-contained slasher-film trope. “Scream Queens” bogs down, though, when it enters another familiar Brennan-Falchuk-Murphy territory, which could be called identity entertainment — their penchant for making any story, regardless of its subject matter or genre, deal largely in representations of (and gags about) gender, sexuality, race, class and whatever other categories they deem worthy of breaking down. It’s an admirable impulse but turning it into comedy can be tough work…
... almost prohibitively camp in tone, even for a Murphy show, scorching the campus of fictional Wallace University with any number of insults and derisive jokes aimed at every possible demographic, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability and so on — all in the name of giddy fun and utter nonsense. Curiously, though, the humor here is not all that sharp; in its better scenes, “Scream Queens” verges on social commentary about political correctness and then turns tail once it gets a look at its own reflection in the mirror. Such pretty teeth and no real bite. …
The San Francisco Chronicle says:
... The performances are enjoyable, for the most part, but the script is surprisingly flat for a Murphy-Falchuk show. …
... Ryan Murphy of Glee and American Horror Story fame (along with his co-creators on those shows, Brad Falchuk and Ian Brennan) brings the worst qualities of both shows to the abysmal Scream Queens, an alleged horror-comedy that’s horrifying in all the wrong ways. … Scream Queens is completely clueless about what’s actually scary, and its comedy is ugly and mean-spirited, full of hateful stereotypes and casual misogyny. Murphy is great at attracting a talented cast (which here includes Emma Roberts, Jamie Lee Curtis and Abigail Breslin, among others) and then saddling them with obnoxious characters and ridiculous dialogue. …
... If only everyone else in Scream, and anything else about it was as assured and entertaining as Curtis's performance. But elsewhere, this blend of horror and comedy is a fairly typical mishmash of styles and tones that wavers between not doing enough and not leaving well enough alone. … Yet despite all its flaws, vulgarities and miscues, and for all the justifiable fear that, like many shows from this team, it will go screaming off the quality cliff, there is an energy to Scream most other new shows are missing. It's different. And it has Curtis.
… has a high body count, but it doesn't try to convince you that the deaths mean anything other than giggles and gore — which is actually a relief. You invest only in the mayhem, which is ample. ... The optimistic viewer would say that Scream Queens episode 2 is just a show settling into a sustainable rhythm after an outsized premiere, while a cynic would point to the propensity of Murphy shows inevitably to decline. …
... the series simply feels too derivative to be truly exciting or particularly suspenseful. So while the casting and format should be enough to help “Scream Queens” make some initial noise ratings-wise, creatively speaking, there’s just not much here to shout about. …
8 p.m. Tuesday. Fox.
