OVERVIEW
Dragged back into the usual nonsense, Cindy Campbell (Anna Faris) and her returning crew (Regina Hall, Marlon Wayans, Shawn Wayans) land in a world where every horror hit of the past few years is all colliding in the same place. Functioning as a delivery system for jokes more than a story, the film hands Marlon Wayans a Get Out hypnosis, has the vanishing children of Weapons disappear because they are high, and has Cheri Oteri take The Substance (here called The Stuff) to compete with younger influencers. Sinners, Smile, Terrifier, Longlegs, and even One Battle After Another all make their appearances. The connective tissue is a mix of the recent Scream films and Halloween, with a young cast competing for screen time alongside the returning legacy cast while a killer is at large.
BACKGROUND
The theatrical spoof, as a viable form, died sometime around the end of the 2000s, run into the ground by the Friedberg and Seltzer school of Date Movie, Epic Movie, Disaster Movie, and every other [Noun] Movie, reference-dump comedy that mistook recognition for actual comedy. Scary Movie 5 was the last gasp in 2013, and it earned 4% on Rotten Tomatoes. The curious thing is that horror never went anywhere. The genre only got bigger and more respectable over the years the franchise sat dormant, with the prestige-horror wave and the Blumhouse model both firing the entire time, which makes it strange to think that films like The Conjuring, Midsommar, and The Babadook will never be stamped for eternity by a spoof equivalent of their own. It took the Wayans signaling their interest in returning for Miramax to greenlight another entry, with the brothers back on the script for the first time since 2001.
THE REVIEW
By now, anyone who goes to watch a new Scary Movie knows what to expect. This one delivers exactly what it promises: a short, crude, overstuffed collection of horror references, presented as something closer to a collection of SNL sketches than to narrative filmmaking. The result is occasionally funny, rarely inspired, and mostly trapped by the same reference-first logic that helped kill the spoof movie in the first place.
Some sketches work better than others. Longlegs, Terrifier, and Weapons were my favorites, while others like Sinners, The Substance, and Get Out count on recreating those films’ most iconic scenes, not that differently from the cringeworthy sketches that open the Academy Awards, where the joke is less “here is something funny” and more “you saw this movie too, right?” Once in a while, it throws in a surprise cameo or references an unexpected movie, but most of the time it follows the formula very faithfully.
Using the recent Scream and Halloween films as the spine is both obvious and limiting. On paper, it makes sense, since both franchises have already spent years talking about legacy sequels, nostalgia, fan culture, and old characters being dragged back into new horrors. At the same time, those films were already making fun of themselves, and building a spoof around them means the movie is often parodying something that has already done half the job. It also inherits their biggest weakness: too much time spent with younger characters who are never as compelling or as memorable (and, in this case, as funny and strange) as the originals. The opening 30 minutes, in particular, are a slog with the focus on its three main new characters.
There is pleasure in seeing Anna Faris and Regina Hall return to these roles. Faris has always understood Cindy as more than just a blank parody heroine and once again plays the stupidity with total sincerity. Hall remains even better, despite her ugly wig, and seeing her return to the same chaotic energy after her subdued performance in One Battle After Another is great. The two commit to the absurdity, at times, as if they are in an actual horror film. Marlon Wayans never quite worked for me, and here he doubles down on the exaggerated, Eddie Murphy-like “funny” expressions and weed jokes that did not change my mind.
As usual, the jokes are hit and miss. The movie is better when it steps slightly outside the references and builds its own absurd situations, like a young man trying to apply Marlon Wayans’ ridiculous ‘going down’ advice in real life. But much of the material feels tired, including a stabbing gag in which a line is formed to stab a character, which has been done better in many Naked Gun films. For me, the rate was about one small chuckle for every ten attempts that passed straight.
FINAL THOUGHTS
That is the strange thing about reviewing a movie like this. Roger Ebert opened his original Scary Movie review by calling films like this “the most unreviewable,” because they reject almost every normal measure we use to decide whether a movie is good. Plot, character, structure, dialogue, emotion, none of it matters much here. What matters is whether the jokes hit, and for me, most of them did not.
Still, I can see its appeal. Horror has given the franchise more than enough new material, and bringing back Faris, Hall, and the Wayans brothers lends this entry more legitimacy than a random studio revival would have. But the movie also proves how hard it is to make this formula feel fresh now. Horror has become more self-aware, audiences have become more fluent in genre references, and the internet already turns every major release into a parody within days. Recognition is not enough.
For viewers nostalgic for the original franchise, that may be enough, especially watching Faris and Hall act ridiculous again without ever winking too hard at the camera. But as proof that the theatrical spoof is back, this feels less like a comeback than a reminder of why it disappeared in the first place. Now, I think we can take another 13-year break, right?