Scream Episode 8 “Village Of The Damned”

On the Morgue podcast, Noah points out the dangerous delusional thinking between the upcoming Lakewood Days Carnival celebrating the troubled town’s 100th year of burying its dead teenagers. There’s a killer on the loose, and a wily one he or she is! He draws comparisons to opening the beaches on Amity Island with a man-eating shark in the waters.

Audrey wakes up to blood dripping from the ceiling. She sees a crimson message written there that reads: 12 Dead. On her bedroom mirror, another portent of doom: “No one will ever forgive you.”

Maybe it’s time for a lock on the window?

She tells Noah about the warnings, and they count the actual dead. There’s only 11.

Zoe, Stavo, Noah and Audrey talk about the attack of Ms Lang while in class. They can’t understand why Lang isn’t dead, which is a fair question. Though the killer was interrupted by a janitor, he could have easily stabbed Lang in the back as she made for the stairs, assuring her death. It doesn’t make a great deal of sense. Yet.

The Mayor makes a PA announcement about not giving in to fear and encouraging everyone to attend the carnival. The group completely disagrees with him. They think the whole celebration is misguided and insane. Brooke turns up and reveals that one of her father’s real estate properties burnt down the night before and he’s furious.

Acosta examines crime scene photos of the bloody floor (the one that Ms Lang landed on), then gets a box of her secretly recorded tapes. One of the tapes is labeled Gustavo Acosta. He pulls it out and hides it in his desk.

At Wren Lake Estates, Acosta and his people find two unrecognizable bodies in the bathtub, burned horrifically. Emma and Eli show up and tell Acosta the truth about her role in the fire the night before. During an interview, Emma learns that arson was involved and that Eli has a restraining order against him after creeping into a woman’s bedroom in Atlanta.

Afterwards, Eli wants to know if he’s in trouble with the cops, but Emma is not having any of it. She’s done with him after he didn’t fully disclose his past. Meanwhile, Maggie is reinstated on the case. Surprise, surprise!

Zoe shows Brooke her dress for the Lady of the Lake crowning, and Miss Maddox offers to get her a new one and a full makeover so she can look hot for Noah.

Acosta listens to the Lang tapes, in which his son compares serial killer Ed Gein to Michaelangelo. Yikes. He searches Stavo’s room at home. He’s looking for the mask. Stavo ain’t too happy about this.

Emma apologizes to Kieran for the distance. He knows that he loves her and that he only went to the cops because he cares so much. She reveals that she knows about the tragic death of his stepfather because Eli told her. Kieran tells her to stay away from Eli. He’s mentally unbalanced.

Audrey gets a video on her phone showing Emma sleeping in her bed while black gloved hands hover over her face, brandishing a bloody knife. But what does it MEAN? What message is he trying to get across? Is it a metaphorical exploration of the French Revolution or just a super creepy threat? Hmmm…

The phone rings.

“You’re not a victim, Audrey. You’re a killer. Remember that. Call the cops? You’re done. Confess to Emma? It’s over. What’s left? Just me.”

Afterwards, Audrey calls Emma and invites her to the carnival. Cut to the midway as the girls walk around chatting about the past. Well, the happy parts of it.

In a tent, Brooke makes Zoe look even more lovely. Z brings out a flask of liquor she brought to get over her fear of public speaking, and they gulp it down. Noah arrives, sees the new babe-a-licious Zoe and is dutifully impressed. The pair leave Brooke alone. Stavo arrives and wants to pull Brooke out of the pageant for her safety and the stupidity of it all.

Audrey and Emma play carnival games until Eli shows up to ruin the fun. Kieran moves towards them and a fight begins. Kieran punches him out.

“Don’t worry, Kieran. It’s not like I told her the worst part.”

Noah and Zoe have fun, kiss and get pics in a photo booth.

Audrey tells Emma about the messages, though not their content. She wonders aloud if Eli is responsible now that she knows that he stalked a woman in Atlanta.

Zoe gives a delightful pro-Lakewood speech that goes over well. Now drunk on Zoe’s liquor, Brooke is called to give a speech and does in five minutes what a thousand Piper Shaws never could: she brings Lakewood to its knees, publicly shaming the citizenry for their surface pretense and lies, for their complete ignorance of both the past and present.

“Congratulations, Lakewood. Happy 100 years of lying to yourself. Unless we wake up and stop acting like this isn’t Murderville, we’re all gonna end up like Jake. And we’ll deserve it. But he didn’t.”

Miguel and Maggie go over the autopsy reports on the two burnt bodies from the house fire. One of the bodies is identified as Seth Branson, missing his right hand. After Maggie steps out, Miguel flips through Stavo’s drawings and finds one of Branson cuffed to a bed.

But how could he know about that?

Brooke feels bad after her speech. Her dad is pretty freaked out, but he warms up soon enough. Emma gets a text to meet Kieran by the Ferris wheel. She leaves her pals behind. At the wheel, she gets a call from Kieran’s cell. It’s not Kieran, though. And I’m not the only one who thought highly of Brooke’s public outburst.

“I liked your friend’s speech. A real knife to the gut.”

Emma is sent a video of Kieran struggling in the Fun House. She races to the rescue. Inside, moves through nightmarish displays as Ghostface passes her unseen. A deputy trailing Emma follows her into the Fun House. In the Hall Of Mirrors, he is pushed through a mirror violently.

As Emma stumbles across his body, she pulls out his gun as Ghostface looms towards her. She fires a round at the killer. It shatters a mirror and leaves her target unharmed. The masked murderer bursts out of the Fun House doors and races at the cops. But this Ghostface gets down on his knees when Acosta tells him to and makes weird whimpering sounds.

He is unmasked and its Kieran, with his mouth taped shut and a knife tied to his hand.

In the aftermath, Kieran tells Emma that he was IN the car when his stepfather died. They were having an argument and the man took his eyes off the road for a second.

Audrey and Noah discuss the killer and her guilt. She agrees to tell Emma that very night. Zoe, we learn, has been crowned Lady of the Lake. In Noah’s bedroom, the couple make out hot and heavy until the phone rings. It’s Audrey. Zoe tells him to answer it and leaves.

In Brooke’s bedroom, a menacing figure emerges from behind curtains. It’s Stavo and she’s happy to see him. He’s her bodyguard for the night.

Audrey goes to see Emma, even as Miss Duval is listening to the podcast sound file emailed to her, presumably by Zoe. She finishes and Audrey enters, just as recorded Audrey blurts out:

“I brought Piper to Lakewood.”

With the unmasking only four episodes away, let’s talk about the season so far.

The personality of the killer is much different this time around. If Piper was an avenging angel of death out to punish Lakewood and tear off the mask of hypocrisy, this new killer knows that proverbial masks are more valuable when people will do anything to keep them ON, and employs psychological manipulation and threats to further his ends. He turns friend against friend, fosters distrust, uses mind altering drugs, preys on Audrey’s guilt and fear to keep her compliant and quiet, and tries to get Emma to doubt herself when he’s not busy framing her.

He’s not a vengeance crazed slasher at all; he’s a puppet master, coldly moving each of the players into position. There is patience and calculation. He has never said a word about making the town pay, or mentioned Brandon James. Revenge doesn’t seem to be the dominant motive. It’s something else. Bringing Steve Duval back to Lakewood after so many years, amputating Seth Branson’s hand but not killing him, etc. There’s something going on here we can’t see yet.

What is truth and what is fiction? That’s the question Season 2 poses as dark secrets about Kieran and Emma’s pasts come to light, as shameful truths about Steve Duval’s abuse towards Maggie emerge, as Audrey is forced to confront what she did, as Noah realizes his best friend was in league with a murderer. This killer doesn’t want to simply stab his victims.

He wants to destroy them from the inside.

The big questions of the season hover. Is Emma the sadistic young girl in flashback dissecting hogs at Troy James’s pig farm on Pikeview Road? Who is the man holding Emma as a child in the photograph? How does the killer even know Audrey was ever involved?

Some of the new characters are so ridiculously shady it’s funny. Stavo, with his mask and bloody drawings of Emma and the others. Eli, with his lies and dark past. Even sweet seeming Zoe, who has a few unexplained situations surrounding her as well, remains a suspect. Her very innocence makes her look guilty.