Film Review: Scary Movie
Every Line Will Be Crossed
Introduction
This is a quick review of the newly released film Scary Movie. Please note that this is just one of the many movies I will have watched each year, and my initial grade for this film may change over time, for better or worse. To stay up to date on my thoughts about other movies and any potential changes in my opinion on this one, follow me on Letterboxd.
Plot
Via Letterboxd: Twenty-six years after outrunning a suspiciously familiar masked killer, the Core Four are back in the killer’s crosshairs and no horror movie IP is safe.
Review
I remember back in 2000 being a sixth grader whose friends treated the horror-film satire Scary Movie, which was mostly a spoof of the Scream films, as one of the greatest pieces of cinema they’d ever seen. And I think a lot of people my age still look back fondly on that film and some of its sequels as comedy classics they grew up with. For me, though, the experience was a little different.
Putting aside the fact that my classmates and I probably shouldn’t have been watching such movies filled with that level of crude humor at our age, I was never really a fan of the Scary Movie franchise. And not in the sense that I grew older, became more mature, and started looking down on something I once loved as immature. I genuinely never liked these movies. Still, as we’ve seen with the recent Halloween and Scream legacy sequels, Hollywood has become increasingly interested in reviving dormant franchises by bringing back familiar faces and attempting to recapture the magic of the originals. Now it’s Scary Movie’s turn, with a sixth installment hoping to do the same.
This is where some people will probably dismiss my thoughts because I’m a self-admitted non-fan. But I’ll remind those who have followed my reviews over the years that I wasn’t exactly the biggest fan of The Naked Gun films either, and I went into last year’s legacy sequel with very low expectations. That movie ended up being one of the bigger surprises of the year for me and earned a solid B+ review. So I didn’t walk into this new Scary Movie looking to hate it. If anything, I was hoping it would be another pleasant surprise.
Instead, Scary Movie is every bit the disaster I suspected it might be and if you ask me, easily one of the worst films of the year.
To give credit where it’s due, longtime fans will probably get a kick out of seeing the core cast from the first couple of films back together again. There is an undeniable nostalgia factor in watching these performers share the screen after all these years, and for brief moments the movie manages to tap into that goodwill. A random joke or visual gag or cameo here and there even managed to get a chuckle out of me. The problem is that those moments are few and far between.
The biggest issue is that this barely functions as a movie. Rather than telling an actual story, it feels like a collection of disconnected skits loosely strung together under the thinnest possible premise. The original films weren’t exactly masterpieces of narrative structure, but there was at least enough of a plot to make it feel like you were watching a complete comedy. Here, scenes simply happen one after another with little momentum or purpose save for attempting to get in as many references and cameos as they can, creating an experience that quickly becomes exhausting.
The film’s approach to parody is equally frustrating. Instead of finding clever angles or fresh observations about the movies and cultural moments it’s spoofing, it mostly settles for the most obvious joke imaginable. Nearly every target feels like low-hanging fruit, and the movie rarely demonstrates the wit necessary to elevate the material beyond surface-level references.
As the running time progresses, the laughs become increasingly scarce. While I did get the occasional chuckle from a handful of random moments, I spent far more time rolling my eyes or letting out heavy sighs. The humor often feels desperate rather than inspired, constantly trying to provoke a reaction without earning one. There are stretches where the comedy becomes so forced that the film almost starts to feel like a parody of bad parody movies.
What’s especially disappointing is that there is still an audience for this kind of comedy. The success of The Naked Gun showed that audiences will embrace goofy, absurd humor when it’s supported by strong writing and genuine comedic timing. Scary Movie instead feels content to coast on nostalgia, brand recognition, and shoving in as many skits as possible while delivering very little beyond that.
By the end, I felt less like I had watched a movie and more like I had sat through a series of increasingly tiresome sketch ideas that should have remained on a writers’ room whiteboard. Fans of the franchise may find enough nostalgia here to justify the ticket price, particularly if they have a strong attachment to the original cast. For everyone else, this is a chaotic, incoherent mess that mistakes references for jokes and noise for comedy. A few scattered laughs can’t save what ultimately feels like a painfully dated attempt to revive a franchise that has very little left to say - if it ever did to begin with.
“TL;DR”
Pros: Fans of the franchise will get a huge kick out of seeing the core group from the first couple films back together again
Cons: Incoherent mess of a movie with no real plot and an overreliance on skits that makes it not feel like you’re watching an actual movie; While it did get a chuckle out of me a random scene or two, this got more eye rolls and heavy sighs with the way it tackled its topics and parodies
Grading
