Joel on Film

The plot of 2000’s Scary Movie parodied the driving narrative of 1996’s Scream, so it only makes sense that the new film in the franchise, also simply called Scary Movie, would model itself after the 2022 reboot in the other one, which was also simply called Scream. Once director Michael Tiddes allows us to make that connection, there are very few places to take this long-gestating rebirth of the parody-movie franchise. That’s sort of surprising and definitely a bit depressing, considering that the first three films in the franchise were all pretty funny comedies and had a lot of amusing things to say about the various horror trends they sought to prod and poke.

Tiddes even brings back a lot of the reasons for those movies’ success, such as sibling producers and comedians Marlon and Shawn Wayans as the marijuana-devouring Shorty and the very gay but constantly questioning Ray, as well as the indomitable Anna Faris and Regina Hall as the series’ original final girl Cindy Campbell and Black-woman sidekick Brenda Meeks. One would think that success would follow, but for whatever reason, this movie can’t figure out anything to say about the phenomenon of legacy sequels until its climax. By then, we’ve just been treated to the usual slew of genre-specific parodies and line-crossing jokes.

In terms of the comedy here, the film’s committee of screenwriters (the onscreen Wayanses, their brother Keenen Ivory Wayans and nephew Craig Wayans, and regular producing partner Rick Alvarez) seem to realize they have a lot to catch up on in terms of horror-movie targets. By this critic’s estimation, they make reference to at least 11 years of movies that have released since the previous installment (the one from 2013 that effectively killed the franchise and, at the time, any future for it—and which, tellingly, isn’t even mentioned here). They range from, obviously, the film’s entire plot to a few shoutouts in the dialogue.

Overall, the hand we’re dealt with here is definitely an improvement upon the last movie but, even in its best moments, comes nowhere near the cleverest bits of the original three, landing somewhere right around (but, perhaps, ever-so-slightly above) the fourth one. It’s important to point all that out, by the way, because in the climax of the movie, it seems the filmmakers pretty much acknowledge that their actors are essentially just playing themselves. A big part of the finale, in fact, puts this movie into the direct context of its predecessors in a way that’s genuinely amusing, though too late to make much of a difference.

Oh, yeah, there is a plot, by the way, which has Cindy’s two grown daughters (Olivia Rose Keegan’s prescription pill-popping Sara and Savannah Lee Nassif’s Tuesday, whose name should be a dead giveaway for her appearance) reunited when one of them is attacked by the Ghostface Killer. Cindy has locked herself away in a heavily fortified house, like the heroine of yet another recently rebooted franchise, and promises to come out of hiding. That also means conjuring the likes of Shorty and Ray and Brenda and even Doofy (Dave Sheridan), the developmentally challenged former sheriff and first Ghostface, to coax the new one out of his mask.

If the plot of the movie is devoted to a disappointingly routine riff on Scream and Halloween, its references are just kind of a proverbial game of darts for Tiddes, who doesn’t really offer any good reason to mention specific movies in a review for this one. It’s also a game of waiting however long it takes—usually, just a few seconds—for the next reference to arrive, which will then promptly be followed by the film’s characters specifying what the reference meant. They’re occasionally pointed in their targets, like when Ghostface forces Shorty into a literal sunken place, but at other times, they’re just weird, like how that very joke transitions into an animated musical sequence that’s riff on a certain demon-hunting blockbuster.

The other main reason for the movie’s existence is to humor the Wayanses’ apparent dislike for the current state of things, socio-politically speaking, which means quite a large amount of what we might call “anti-woke” humor (really just the type of thing meant to offend gratuitously, but of a different tone than the rest of the movie, which is harmless in its observations). In the year 2026, it’s thoroughly exhausting to watch a movie poke fun at trans and nonbinary characters. Then, there’s the way this movie does it, which is to dispose of examples of both people groups as a sick joke without a punch line.

If the occasional discontentment is enough for a minor soapbox, at least the rest of the production is so slight in its impact and cluttered in its attempted satirical aims that the effect is just a bit better than a complete waste of time. Our time, though, is still a bit wasted by Scary Movie, which approaches satire by dumping all of it onto us in one fell swoop.

Rating: *½ (out of ****)