Suburban Screams (titled onscreen as John Carpenter's Suburban Screams) is an American documentary horror true crime anthology television series created by Jordan Roberts. The series is executive produced by Roberts, John Carpenter, Sandy King, Tony DiSanto, and Andy Portnoy.
The series debuted on Peacock on October 13, 2023, with all six episodes released simultaneously.
In January 2023, John Carpenter confirmed that he was working on a new project, but refused to reveal any details, adding that it was "shrouded in total mystery, like Skull Island." In May 2023, the series was announced by Carpenter by revealing he directed an episode, via zoom calls, from his home in Los Angeles while filming occurred in Prague, Czech Republic. The series is Carpenter's first project he directed since The Ward (2010). Other episode directors include Michelle Latimer, Jan Pavlacky, and the series writer and showrunner Jordan Roberts. Roberts also served as an executive producer, alongside Carpenter, Sandy King, Tony DiSanto, Patrick Smith, and Andy Portnoy. Carpenter also served as the composer of the series' main theme.
John Carpenter's Suburban Screams debuted on Peacock on October 13, 2023, with all six episodes released simultaneously.
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 18% of 17 critics' reviews are positive, with a critics consensus of: "Even with the welcome return of the Master of Horror, Suburban Screams is muffled by rather pedestrian execution". Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned a score of 30 out of 100 based on 8 critics, indicating "Generally Unfavorable" reviews.
Aramide Tinubu of Variety gave a negative review, concluding that "unfortunately, instead of the sinister narratives that fans have come to expect from Carpenter, this series is a cheap display of ghastly crimes." Katie Rife of IGN also gave a negative review, summarzing that the series "is a typical true crime series in every way, except for the participation of John Carpenter and his family. Their contributions are minimal enough, and halfhearted enough, to not make much of a difference, however." Brian Tallerico of RogerEbert.com simarily felt that the series "doesn't deserve [Carpenter]'s name". Daniel Fienberg of The Hollywood Reporter also commented on Carpenter's involvement with the series, elaborating that "without the attachment of Carpenter's name, Suburban Screams would just be negligible, but probably unreviewed. With his name, it's disappointingly negligible and here we are."
In October 2023, executive producer Sandy King expressed interest in making further seasons, saying "I think that it would be really fun to see how deep we can go and how many weird things really happen".