10 Horror TV Shows That Wasted Incredible Premises

Wes Craven's 1996 slasher bonanza Scream revitalized the flagging sub-genre in blockbuster fashion; Scream's rampant commercial and critical success led to the commission of a multi-film franchise and even a television series based on the same universe.

Ultimately, however, MTV's aforementioned anthology show runs into the same roadblocks that led to the slasher sub-genre stagnating in the first place. The show is bland, uninspired and - most egregiously of all for a horror outing - not very scary. It is also notable for a disastrously misjudged attempt at re-imagining the iconic Ghostface mask.

Scream does have some redemptive qualities - some of the character exploration in the later seasons is genuinely compelling in patches while the tongue in cheek manner of production also received praise - that led to three seasons being commissioned before the show's cancellation. Nevertheless, with the exception of a brief uptick in positive reviews for the second season, Scream never received more than lukewarm critical reception; an egregious failure when one considers the innate quality of the thrilling fictional bedrock that inspired it.

Indeed, while Scream's original premise is boundlessly exciting, it could be argued that basing a series on a franchise that had its heyday in the late-1990s doomed MTV's outing from the get go.