Review: When The Screaming Starts

Going into watching When the Screaming Starts, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I went in blind to almost everything aside knowing its a mockumentary.

The concept is interesting as Norman (Jared Rogers) is an aspiring filmmaker looking for an angle to make it big when he discovers Aidan (Ed Hartland) on “the dark web” who is an aspiring serial killer.

Norman sees Aidan as his meal ticket and takes the assignment without once blinking an eye at the idea that he will be witnessing actual murder happen before his eyes which should tell you right away that Norman is a tad unhinged.

Aidan boasts about thinking about killing people and what he would do to them on the surface but you can see right away he’s not up to the task as he attempts to kill his former friend Luke (Daniel Collard), who caused his band Kannibal Death March to break up, only to find himself getting choked out. He changes his plan and wants to “start a family” like Charles Manson in which he successfully does with his girlfriend Claire (Kaitlin Reynell) who is never without her camera to document the shot.

They find a group including a fish monger Jack (Yasen Atour), two twins Viktoria (Vår Haugholt) and Veronika (Ronja Haugholt), a yogi Masoud (Kavé Niku) who has no idea what’s going on, and the main antagonist Amy (Octavia Gilmore).

The family make a plan to invade a dinner party and kill everyone which is later discovered to be Amy’s father and his high class friends. Aidan is not present for any of it but is wanting to take credit anyways which Amy takes extreme offense to and takes everyone with her.

Norman is overjoyed about the footage he has until Amy takes it away from him prompting Norman to sneak inside the family’s house and ends up confronting Amy about the footage when she threatened his life. In a shot I should’ve saw coming, it is Norman who ends up killing Amy and soon after Claire who was there taking pictures of what happened.

Aidan goes to Norman to confront him and finds out that Norman just wanted to kill Amy and Claire for Aidan and all he would have to do is admit he did it, Aidan doesn’t want things done that way and in the end it doesn’t end up well for Aidan as it’s Norman who ends up killing him in the end becoming the “CamperVan Killer” and Aidan just becomes another unknown victim attached to the regular killings.

We find out a little bit more about the whereabouts of the rest of the living members of the family and the movie ends with footage of Aidan stating “I don’t want to be a nobody, I want to be remembered. Serial Killers don’t get forgotten, no one remembers the victim” ironic knowing that due to circumstances its now Norman who will be remembered as the killer that Aidan “wanted to be”.

It’s darkly comedic and definitely worth your time to check out whenever you can.