The first season of "Scream" has received an mixed response from critics. On the review aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes, it has a rating of 47%, based on 29 reviews, with a 5.4/10 average rating. The site's critical consensus reads, "Lacking truly compelling characters or scenarios, "Scream" is forced to trade too heavily on nostalgia for its big-screen predecessors in the franchise." On Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating, the series has a score of 57 out of 100, based on 20 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".