“Well, wherever she went, people died. Other people. It was never her.” – Olivia Morris, “Scream 4”
This week’s “Scream” is lean and mean as “The Vanishing” of Noah Foster has nuGhostface’s “favorite final girls” racing against the clock to save his life.
Noah’s abduction at the hands of the killer is a solid piece of “Scream” business. He starts the episode trying to get a hold of Zoe, not just because he’s feeling some post-popping his cherry clinginess, but because there’s a masked psycho on the loose and he wants to make sure she’s safe. Texts from her phone lead him to their spot at Wren Lake, but he’s already walked halfway into the trap before he realizes what’s happening. After a perfectly executed jump scare (I jumped, then laughed at myself when Noah screamed at his phone ringing), Noah is on with nuGhostface, “long time listener, first time caller.” Their banter back and forth – nuGhostface reminds Noah that he and Zoe are now on the “slasher chopping block” since they lost their virginities, Noah recommends he change his retrograde thinking – reminded me of Randy’s chat with the killer in “Scream 2.” And just like Randy, Noah is soon ambushed and stabbed in the side. The killer wants to play a game and Noah’s the prize...and the bait.
Unfortunately for Noah, the contestants are in no condition to be a winning team. When we first see them, Emma is offering Audrey the opportunity to come clean about everything she knows about Piper so they can try and figure out who has picked up where she left off. It doesn’t start out great when Audrey admits she knew the whole time that Piper was Emma’s half-sister (how do we think Piper found out?), and still said nothing when people started suspecting Brandon James’ child was the killer. But it turns out she had more of a reason to believe Piper wasn’t nuGhostface – they were together at the Crescent Palms the night Rachel was murdered. Things grind to a halt, though, when Emma presses Audrey on why she really brought Piper to Lakewood and Audrey refuses to concede that she was trying to hurt Emma. But a video link of Noah in peril forces them to put their argument aside.
So what has nuGhostface done to Noah? Well, Noah is horrified when he regains consciousness and realizes he’s been buried alive, a mini-camera streaming his terror live. Shuuuddder. For me personally, being buried alive tops the list of gruesome ways to go so I found this whole thing very creepy. And again, John Karna does a great job as Noah flips back and forth between hysterically freaking out, slamming his limbs against the coffin’s sides, and trying to keep calm and converse his air, even imagining talking to Zoe (and sidebar – when they started wistfully musing about going to college in the same city, I knew at least one of them wasn’t making it out of the episode alive).
Elsewhere, things aren’t going great for his rescue team. As they follow the killer’s trail from Noah’s murder board to the now abandoned horse stables where they first met and became friends, things are tense as hell between Emma and Audrey, especially after Emma finds a photocopy of one of Audrey’s letters to Piper that really spells out how she felt about her at the time. They continue to take their stress and worry out on each other as they search, Emma demanding to know why Audrey hated her so much. And then, finally, out it comes – Audrey had been in love with Emma and that’s why she took the dissolution of their friendship so hard. “You broke my heart,” Audrey emotionally explains, “and the worst part is, you didn’t even know you were doing it.” It’s a confession that really clicks things into place, and it’s a great moment from Willa Fitzgerald and, especially, Bex Taylor-Klaus.
At the horse stables, the show answers a question of mine – it’s where Jake was murdered in the season premiere, which the killer confirms with a GIF he sends the girls of slicing into Jake’s stomach. After searching the grounds, they finally decide to look under the bloody pig carcass in the center of the stable (that’s where I would have started, personally) and they dig up Noah before he suffocates. But it’s not over yet – Zoe’s voice wasn’t just in Noah’s head, but was also coming from a cell phone hidden underneath his coffin. On it is a streaming video showing that Zoe has also been buried alive.
The kids quickly figure out she’s at the Wren Lake dock and rush to rescue her, with Noah refusing to be deterred by his stab wound. But wickedly, the video was either on a time delay or a repeating loop, because by the time they drag her coffin out of the water, she’s already dead. Awww, Zoe, sorry I was on-and-off suspicious of you all season. After a heartbroken Noah is carted off to the hospital, nuGhostface calls to gloat that he always wins. But this latest tragedy has made Emma and Audrey even more determined to stop him.
The only subplot this week (both Brooke and Kieran sit the episode out entirely) is a big one as we learn Maggie and Sheriff Acosta’s secret – they know Brandon James might be alive! In flashbacks (I’m a little confused about the timeline, but I have to think this was after he was supposedly shot and killed by the police and before Maggie found out she was pregnant with Piper), we see Miguel helping Maggie bring Brandon to the James family farm. After burying the knife he presumably used in the massacre, they agree to “forget all about this.” Why Miguel would go out on this limb for Maggie is a question for another day, I guess.
In the present, after doing an autopsy on Piper (Tracy Middendorf is so good playing Maggie’s horror yet resolve as she cuts into her child) and finding a pig heart in her chest cavity, Sheriff Acosta insists their past is coming back to haunt them. He’s even more sure after he finds a hidden room in the farmhouse, complete with the missing photos of Emma. Maggie’s skeptical that Brandon is still alive – it appears he eventually ran away into the woods – or would do this to her daughter, but she decides to try and make contact in their old way, by leaving a note in the tree between their childhood homes.
Finally, for some reason, the show decides to end one of its best episodes with one of its worst characters. I kept waiting for him to show up given his prominence in the previouslies. But it’s only in the last few seconds that we see Eli, creepily spying on Maggie. What is his deal? And why isn’t he dead yet?
Thanks for reading my thoughts on “The Vanishing.” Share your take on this week’s “Scream” in the comments section.
