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Parents' Guide to

Scream

By Joyce Slaton, Common Sense Media Reviewer

age 16+

Extreme graphic violence in TV retread of slasher series.

TV MTV Drama 2015
Scream Poster Image

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this TV show.

Community Reviews

age 14+

Based on 13 parent reviews

age 11+

Good

The show was awesome! Was very gory but I would say 14 because it was like that on mtv and vh1 it now has a TV-MA rating on Netflix but I would say 14 and one sex scene in season 2
age 16+

Good, but very gory!

This show is awesome. There is only one sex scene which is in season 2 episode 8. The violence is very gory and graphic. The show had a TV-14 rating on the MTV channel, but now has a TV-MA rating on Netflix because of how gory it is. If you look away on some of the gory parts, I’d say 14+, but if you look away on a lot of the gory parts, I’d say 13+.

Is It Any Good?

Our review:
Parents say (13 ):
Kids say (37 ):

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.

TV Details

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