In 2000, director Keenen Ivory Wayans teamed up with his brothers Marlon and Shawn Wayans to shoot Scary Movie, a script that the pair had written parodying all things horror.
Most notably the film parodies the Scream franchise which, at that point, was already taking a dive of its own, that year’s Scream 3 getting something of a kicking.
This supposedly loving send-up of the genre seemed keen to overlook or obfuscate Scream’s own place in the horror conversation – those films quite clearly setting out with a similar goal of taking on and dissecting tropes of past slashers and horror flicks to get audiences laughing amidst all the scares.
‘This white girl can’t die on my shift – I’m a DEI hire!’
The Scary Movie series then continued with a second instalment the following year, after which the Wayans took a step back from the franchise, helming White Chicks instead of taking on Scary Movie 3, which would have come with a pay cut. After later instalments received mixed receptions, the franchise screeched to a halt with 2013’s fifth instalment, lying dormant until now in what’s been advertised as a long-awaited, triumphant return for the Wayans. Just one look at the credits is enough to show you just how many Wayans are involved in this homecoming – they are all over this film.
From an integrity standpoint, I can appreciate the move of bringing the original talent back in to revive the franchise. This new instalment has reset the series’ numbering, comic-book style, to hammer home the idea of a new beginning. What better time for me to jump on board with my first ever Scary Movie, eh? Yes, this was my first foray into the franchise – I must admit, the idea of catching up with a quintuple bill of horror spoofs (most of which I’ve heard terrible things about) didn’t put an eerily wide smile on my face. On the basis of this experience in the cinema, I’d colour myself unlikely to venture back into these movies for another round (at least not until the next one of these releases – I do feel a sense of duty as a critic to ‘print the news and raise Hell’, so to speak).
From what I’ve gathered, these movies have never been big on plot but what little there is here revolves around long-time protagonist Cindy reuniting with her estranged daughter Sara to try and track down a brand new Ghostface killer. Everyone’s a suspect and, more importantly, everyone’s a caricature, from Sara’s aggressively chipper yet blatantly sinister new beau to the conspiracy nut cop ‘Doofy’ whose characterisation teeters on the edge of ableism in stomach-churning fashion.
Marlon and Shawn Wayans are Shorty and Ray, both returning to their roles from long ago. Shorty’s an infantile herb enthusiast with newfound riches in the crypto scene and Ray is a closeted man living with his wife, Regina Hall’s Brenda, whose suspicions are consistently raised by the script’s many, many innuendos.
Already, I seem to be reaching the crux of the issue: these jokes just aren’t funny and they’re as not funny the tenth or fifteenth time you hear them as they were when you first heard them over an hour ago. About ten years ago, my younger sister entertained the whole family over Christmas dinner by telling the same joke over and over again – same punchline, same delivery, same everything – and we all made an effort to give her a big laugh every time…because she was two.
Somehow, the Wayans circles must still be giving them similar treatment well into their fifties – that’s the only explanation I can muster for the sheer repetitiveness of the gags on offer here. It would be one thing if they were any good, but they just fell on deaf ears for me, as well as a great deal of the audience. There were some laughs from the crowd – one man behind me enjoyed it from start to finish, laughing (rather fittingly) like Dracula – but when the silence hit, you could practically hear crickets. And they’re not even in season yet.
What little excitement I could find going into this release came from being invested in the modern horror scene and some interest in seeing how the film would take on and play off against recent successes like Sinners, Longlegs and The Substance, among a healthy dose of non-horror IPs too (they’re certainly in there, though I won’t spoil any of them for you).
As soon as an early scene played up a joke with a Jenna Ortega lookalike called – get ready – Tuesday, I lost a good amount of hope and bafflingly, rather than relaxing into it and steering into the skid, things just got worse and worse. It may well characterise the series as a whole, but the humour on display here just has a grim and mean-spirited feeling to it, as well as a wholly juvenile fascination with all things toilets, sex and drugs (the key trinity of a Wayan movie).
There’s little in the way of creativity when it comes to the film’s depiction of each influential movie – the emphasis here seems to have been placed on sight gags alone, with little to no time paid to the script. It’s all so blatantly obvious in a way that had me bored enough to feel every single minute of the film’s 94-minute runtime. By the end, it felt far longer than anything I’d seen recently in the cinema (in the age of prestige, three-hour pictures, no less).
Scary Movie is now in comfortable contention with Michael (which still lives on in cinemas, playing out the theatrical box office equivalent of a seven-week moonwalk) for the worst film I’ve seen this year.
While the sheer act of watching it didn’t leave me feeling genuinely guilty for having endorsed an insular and self-aggrandising Messiah story by buying a ticket, it was a true slog to get through. I didn’t laugh; I sniffed twice with a vague acknowledgment of something funny – like when a dog huffs at you before you throw the ball back for him. I would have loved to recommend this as a fun little romping entry point for the series, but unless you’re an absolute Scary Movie devotee, I think your mileage will be minimal at best.
BBFC: Rated 15 for frequent strong language, sex references, drug misuse, violence, nudity.
Scary Movie is in cinemas now.
