By George & Josh Bate
It’s about time we got another Scary Movie, right? Well, be careful what you wish for….
The horror genre has arguably not thrived to the extent it is now since the 1980s and yet cinemas around the world have been deprived of a Scary Movie installment for 13 years. This dearth in parodies was to be expected, however, as a deluge of films like Meet the Spartans, Superhero Movie, Disaster Movie, and the so-bad-its-good Epic Movie eventually put the nail in the coffin of the oversaturated genre.
Now, the Wayans brothers return to the fan favorite franchise and try to revive it from the sunken place for a sixth installment that is disappointingly and painfully unfunny.
From director Michael Tiddes (A Haunted House), Scary Movie brings Anne Faris’ Cindy Campbell back after her absence from Scary Movie 5. The clueless yet remarkably resilient protagonist of the franchise reunites with Brenda Meeks (Regina Hall), Shorty Meeks (Marlon Wayans), and Shawn Wayans (Ray Wilkins) after the masked killer that terrorized their lives 26 years ago resurfaces.
No one expects a profound, thought-provoking, and emotionally stirring viewing experience from a Scary Movie, but the franchise’s long-awaited sixth entry falls woefully short of even the most tempered of expectations. Scary Movie has always thrived at the intersection of crude, slapstick humor and rapid-fire pop culture references and horror movie parody. Not every joke is going to land, but you can almost guarantee that, even the franchise’s worst installment to date (i.e., Scary Movie 5), a few hearty laughs are in store. That the new Scary Movie’s most subversive and ‘original’ element is that it is shockingly and entirely devoid of any hearty laughs proves to be as frustrating as it is disappointing.
After a cringe-worthy cold open featuring cameos from an Academy Award nominee and a staple of the parody genre, Scary Movie proceeds forward as, primarily, a parody of Radio Silence’s Scream from 2022, while sprinkling in elements of Halloween (2018), Sinners, and Ma, amongst other recent horror hits. Like the legacy sequel it primarily parodies, Tiddes’ film blends legacy characters (Marlon Wayans, Shawn Wayans, Anna Faris, and Regina Hall) with a new generation of characters (Olivia Rose Keegan, Savannah Lee Nassif, Sydney Park, and Gregg Wayans, amongst others), all of whom don’t have a shred of the charm and wit of our established players. Keegan, who plays Cindy’s older daughter Sara, promises to be the most compelling of the bunch, replicating the mannerisms and body language of Anna Faris with commendable precision, but even her committed performance can’t elevate such extraordinarily inane material to tolerable heights.
Only the most unknowing of moviegoers would expect a complex narrative from a Scary Movie, but, at minimum, one should be able to anticipate a certain flow. A rhythm that moves the film from scene to scene and renders it more than just a compilation of sketches. For the first half, Tiddes’ film (mostly) achieves this feat, albeit almost entirely absent of even the most modestly effective of gags.
As the film transitions into its second half, however, it loses its tenuous grip on a story and devolves into poorly conceived sketch after poorly conceived sketch. Overly long sequences pull the audience entirely away from the movie’s more compelling elements (namely Wayans x2, Faris, and Hall) and pivot to scenes that contribute nothing, other than minutes to a 96 minute runtime that feels like quadruple the length. It’s simply not enough to reference horror hits like The Substance and Longlegs. The film should aim to do something inventive or have something interesting to say about these films, as all great parodies do. Scary Movie resoundingly fails at this objective.
Making Scary Movie even more egregious is the occasional mean-spiritedness of its humor. The film’s promotional campaign has proudly proclaimed, “Every Line Will Be Crossed,” which suggests a movie that will poke fun at anything and everything and leave no stone unturned. Instead, what audiences are treated to is a film that seems terrified of approaching most issues or topics that may push certain sociopolitical buttons and is far more content using juvenile, uncreative humor to poke fun at race relations and trans people. The issue is not that Scary Movie uses these topics as points of humor; the issue is that Scary Movie has nothing even remotely funny to say about these topics and seems unusually, singularly focused on them, at the expense of other potentially rich comedic material to mine from the 13 years since the last Scary Movie.
VERDICT: 2/10
It’s about time we got another Scary Movie, right? Well, be careful what you wish for. The franchise that has sat near and dear to our hearts since our childhood pitifully crumbles to its lowest point with a painfully unfunny and mean-spirited sixth installment entirely devoid of wit and hearty laughs. While the reunion of Marlon Wayans, Shawn Wayans, Anna Faris, and Regina Hall elicits momentary joy and affords a few chuckles here and there, director Michael Tiddes’ film quickly loses any sense of rhythm or flow and devolves into a poorly cobbled together compilation of ill-conceived sketches. More egregious is the mean-spiritedness of the film’s humor, which fails to live up to its “Every Line Will Be Crossed” tagline by unusually and singularly focusing on race relations and the trans community, while seemingly terrified of approaching other potentially rich comedic material that the 13 years since the last Scary Movie has afforded. Scary Movie brings the Scary Movie franchise into the sunken place, delivering the series’ worst installment (by quite a margin) and rendering the Wayan brothers’ homecoming as disappointing as it is frustrating.