Parents' Guide to Scream

With graphic violence and the "pick 'em off one by one" plot device borrowed from the original Scream, let's just say most parents would probably prefer their grade schoolers and tweens to skip this one. That's not to say it's terrible -- actually, Scream-the-show is pretty scary and does a decent job of giving its characters some meat, essential to any horror drama. If you don't care about the characters, it's not scary, and Scream takes its time getting to know its cast. That said, many of them are tropes: the bad girl, the good girl, the jock, the nerd. We've seen these characters before, and given that the setup isn't exactly fresh, the whole enterprise may be doomed. It's particularly galling that most of the violence centers on young girls, with a male villain stalking them.

However, there's a bit of smart writing here. The advent of cell phones really messed up a lot of horror plots; now that it's tough to realistically strand your characters somewhere with no help, it's a lot harder to scare the audience. So Scream gets points for integrating smartphones and social media into its plot. Horror-movie fans may want to give this one a look, but parents will definitely want to watch first to make sure sensitive teens won't get too freaked out.