Scream Episode 5 “Dawn Of The Dead”
Sheriff Acosta and his men lock down Lakewood’s George Washington High after Jake Fitzgerald’s dead body falls onto the stage. Teacher Karen Lang, guides panicked students to the Learning Center and then agrees to help Audrey and Emma find Brooke, whom was covered in blood, “Carrie” style last episode. Meanwhile the Lakewood 5 hater Haley Myers complains that the survivors of Piper’s murder spree get special treatment.
Both Haley and Karen step back into focus after a couple of episodes in which they did not appear or play major roles. I find Haley’s inexplicable hatred of a small group of people who almost got murdered nihilistically refreshing; she’s so negative that she’s actually pissed at Emma for NOT being dead. It’s just the monkey wrench this season needs, a wild card to come along and really eff things up in the end. I’m hoping she doesn’t become cannon fodder in the coming episodes.
Brooke is still onstage in her blood splattered dress, staring at Jake’s body while Maggie snaps forensic photos. Audrey and Emma burst onto the stage to support Brooke, and a cop pulls Emma away for questioning .
You can understand Miguel’s logic here in looking towards Emma Duval; there’s a new killer on the loose, and she’s a magnet for psychopaths.
During an interview with the sheriff, Noah describes his strange relationship with the deceased. He barely knew Jake, but the murders and terror of last season drove the six students together to become friends. It’s like “The Breakfast Club,” but with knives.
“We know what’s happening, don’t we?”
“What’s happening?”
“Now that Emma’s home, Piper’s accomplice is finishing the job.”
In the Learning Center, the eyes of the student body turn to Emma with suspicion. Her life has been touched by horrible violence, and now that bloody mayhem has spilled onto their school grounds.
Kieran apologizes for doubting Emma when she was attacked in the woods. He tries to console her.
Brooke showers off the blood in the girl’s locker room. Audrey feels terrible. She had the opportunity to say something about a new maniac in town and kept it quiet. Brooke shows Audrey her recent texts from “Jake” which were spent after the jock was slain. While Brooke slips into a GW High cheerleader uniform (her clothes have been confiscated by forensics) Audrey explains that the person who killed Jake actually sent the messages.
Audrey texts “YOU’RE GOING STRAIGHT TO HELL!” from Brooke’s phone.
In the Learning Center, Emma gets that very text on HER phone! She flips the phone over and sees “Property Of The Jake” written on the back.
Someone planted the corpse’s phone in her backpack. She tells Kieran, and the pair bring Audrey in on it.
Outside, Mayor Maddox and Aunt Tina show up to see their kids. Tina is blocked by the cops, but the Mayor breezes on through. Karen comforts Brooke until her father arrives.
Audrey is against Emma giving the phone to the cops. She thinks they are all being manipulated, and that Emma is being set up. If she reveals the phone texts and that Jake’s phone was in her backpack, she will make herself a suspect.
Noah and Zoe reconnect. He learns that she is secretly a huge fan of his podcast, “The Morgue.” They discuss the bolder theatrics of this killer, and how the body dropping was an announcement.
The cops patrolling the school begin a locker search.
Kieran reveals that he has a contraband item in his locker he’d rather the cops didn’t find. He needs to get out of the Learning Center. As he prepares to make his escape, he says:
“I’ll be right back.”
“I can’t believe you just said that.”
Zoe and Audrey fake illness and distract the police long enough for Kieran and Noah to slip out, but Kieran is caught by a deputy, who searches the bag he pulled from his locker. Inside is Kieran’s father’s handgun. Considering that the killer doesn’t use firearms, shouldn’t be a big deal, right?
Wrong!
Acosta knows that Wilcox had nothing to do with Jake. Kieran has been carrying the gun simply to protect himself. The Sheriff wants an “In”, meaning that he wants insider info he thinks the Lakewood 5 has. Eli tells Emma to ditch the death phone and pretend she never saw it. She considers giving it to him.
Kieran arrives back at the Learning Center with Acosta, who makes a bee line for Emma. He knows about Jake’s phone, and she hands it over.
She is taken away by the cops as Audrey begins to focus her anger on Stavo, who is quietly drawing bloody images of Eli and Kieran on his tablet.
After dismissing Emma, Acosta tells a deputy that he wants to keep the students bottled up longer until one of them cracks. Just as he is describing Jake as a guy with many enemies, one of them-Mayor Maddox-walks in. He wants to pull Brooke out, but the Sheriff won’t have it. Maddox casually asks if he himself is a suspect.
“No. You’d never drop a body in front of your daughter. Now a freezer in the garage, that’s more your style.”
As Eli warns everyone to be careful where they place their trust, Haley begins slinging mud at Emma. She had the victim’s phone, a key piece of evidence, and she wasn’t arrested because her mom works with the police. Emma directly confronts that trifling bitch. She tells the troublemaker that it’s easy to be afraid in times like these, and that there’s no reason to fear her or the rest of the L5.
“Well, I am scared. Everyone who comes around you dies. And your friends should be scared, too, cuz they’re all gonna die.”
After Haley calls the Duval family crazy, the slap fighting begins. It then turns into a full on roll-on-the-floor brawl. Karen appears and grabs Emma, whisking her away.
Miguel questions Brooke about the night she last saw Jake alive. She tells him about her fight with him at the school pool, and her dark history with Seth Branson. Brooke firmly believes that Branson slaughtered Jake out of revenge.
Karen, in a boneheaded and highly suspicious move, takes Emma to her office and locks her in while the teacher returns to the Learning Center.
Crazed killer on the loose, and you trap the target in an isolated room alone?
Maggie cries over Jake’s body bag until Brooke shows up in her cheerleading outfit.
Locked in the office, Emma hears a blade being dragged over lockers. Her phone rings and we have the first conversation between the Final Girl and the killer. It’s straight and to the point.
“Hello?”
“Hello, Emma. Did you miss me? I’m coming for you.”
She hears a knife on glass and sees Ghostface waving at her through the office window. Instead of running away in terror, Duval grabs a chair and shatters the glass, then climbs out into an empty hallway, cut by glass and bleeding. She scared the killer away. Somehow.
Acosta pulls Maggie off the case because she’s too emotionally involved. As she is escorted from the scene, Miguel zips open Jake’s body bag and uses his fingerprint to open his phone. Clever!
Audrey begins watching Stavo like a hawk, and during a conversation with Noah about her suspicions, she makes a mistake, accidentally blurting out that she has been getting calls, not just texts from the killer. She tries to backtrack and makes it worse by saying there is more than one victim.
Noah has no idea that Eddie Krueger is dead yet.
Audrey goes a little nuts and grabs Stavo’s tablet, showing his violent fantasy drawings to the trapped students, who attack the Sheriff’s son. Even Haley Myers is like “WTF?” As Stavo is beaten up and his tablet broken, his father is reading the shady texts between Maddox and Jake. He is alerted to the fracas in the Learning Center and rescues his son. Emma shows up dripping blood and looking dazed.
The lock-down ends. Emma tells Acosta and Karen that she had a panic attack and put a chair through a window. She leaves out the whole killer part. Audrey tries to apologize to Stavo and offers to pay for the tablet. It goes badly. As she is occupied, Noah steals her phone off the table.
Brooke descends into the school’s pool, the last place she saw Jake alive, and screams underwater.
It’s a beautifully filmed emotional scene.
In his car, Noah cracks Audrey’s phone password and sees the texts from her evil partner. Of particular interest to him is the one showing camera footage of the storage locker with Audrey leaning over Jake’s body.
