‘The Scream Murder’ Review: When Horror Movies Spill Into Real Life

We don’t usually spend much time on true crime on this site, but this one’s connection to movies made it worth digging into. For decades now, people have insisted on a possible psychological link between violent films and real-world behavior—especially among younger viewers—and there still doesn’t seem to be any clear consensus. Most argue, quite logically, that the connection is negligible, that watching horror movies or films depicting criminal acts doesn’t lead to that kind of conduct, and that other social or psychological factors are what actually make it possible. There’s a lot of truth to that—violent and horror films are watched all over the world, and not every country experiences the same levels of teenage or school-related crime—but at the same time, certain parallels do crop up again and again. This is one of those cases.

In 2006, a girl named Cassie Jo Stoddart was found dead in her home one night in a small Idaho town, stabbed dozens of times. After considering multiple possibilities, the police began to focus on two teenagers—friends of hers from high school, one of them her boyfriend: Brian Lee Draper and Torey Michael Adamcik. The boys had alibis and denied any involvement, but the evidence soon became overwhelming. Their stories didn’t line up; there were obvious lies, contradictions, and glaring gaps in their accounts. Eventually, one of them broke down, confessed, led investigators to key evidence, and directly implicated the other.

From that point on—this all happens in the first of the three episodes—the case seems more or less closed. Or at least it appears that way. Doubts emerge later, along with mutual accusations and lingering suspicions, and the series gradually begins to explore the lives of both suspects. The Scream Murder becomes more compelling here than in any procedural sense, sketching out the inner worlds of two teenagers who felt isolated and marginalized, and who bonded through shared resentments and hostility. Their obsession with horror films—Scream is particularly significant in relation to the crime, though not the only influence—along with their fascination with cases like Columbine High School, and a desperate need for attention in a school where they felt invisible, ultimately created the perfect conditions for real-life horror.

Considering that all of this took place nearly 20 years ago, in September 2006, it’s hard not to wonder how these kinds of behaviors may have evolved alongside the increasingly unhinged subcultures that now circulate online. The film doesn’t really go there. For the most part, it sticks to the case itself, interviewing friends and family members—the two killers appear in the third episode—and revisiting key moments from the trial and sentencing. But the question that lingers is what drives two sixteen-year-olds to commit an act like this in the first place. And, more broadly, what role does culture—cinematic, serialized, online, whatever the form—play in shaping or even encouraging this kind of behavior?

There’s no thesis that fully resolves that dilemma. What remains are shattered lives undone by a senseless crime, broken families, adults who are no longer the teenagers they once were yet powerless to change what happened, and an open question as to whether things might have been handled differently—socially, culturally, or within the family. This isn’t a true crime piece that leans into the mystery of a well-known and thoroughly documented case—the boys even recorded a horrific video outlining their plans—but one that ultimately asks what leads kids that young to commit such acts, and what responsibility, if any, the movies might bear.