Scattershot slasher lega-sequel spoof provides some laughs but doesn’t quite nail the hits-to-misses ratio.
Scary Movie tackles the question, “Why are we still making Scream sequels?” without addressing an even bigger one, namely, “Why are we still making Scary Movie sequels?” Perhaps that’s the point, and certainly this sixth film in the franchise (like the fifth Scream, released without a number in its title) never takes itself too seriously. While the film delivers a fair share of laughs, its barrage of references to recent hit movies calls to mind Pauline Kael’s dismissal of Mel Brooks’ High Anxiety: “This is a child’s idea of satire — imitations, with a funny hat and a leer.”
After the requisite opening sequence involving a famous person — and the famous person in question carries it off with such wit and style that expectations for the rest of the movie are unfairly raised — we cut to Tuesday (Savannah Lee Nassif, styled to look like the lead in Wednesday — get it?) getting stabbed by Ghostface, prompting the return of her pill-popping sister Sara (Olivia Rose Keegan, Gotham Knights) and Sara’s definitely-a-suspect boyfriend Jack (Cameron Scott Robert, Chicago Fire). Sara left town after the Ghostface killings decades earlier turned her mother Cindy (Anna Faris) into an obsessive recluse who booby-trapped her home in case the masked murderer should ever return.
So in the first five minutes, we’re already hitting the recent Scream and Halloween reboots while wedging in Scary Movie legacy characters, like stoner Shorty (Marlon Wayans) and deeply-closeted Ray (Shawn Wayans). No longer talking out loud in movie theaters, Brenda (Regina Hall) returns as a very Ma figure; in case you didn’t catch the reference, someone mentions Octavia Spencer. It’s that kind of spoof, where another movie becomes the subject of parody, and then someone in Scary Movie will say the title of that other film as a kind of floating footnote, which more often than not kills the joke in the first place.
Scary Movie gets its biggest laughs when it strays away from the formula based on spotting references and finds humor from other sources, particularly the fourth-wall breaks in which someone mentions a non-hit movie and explains that they didn’t recreate it because not enough people would get the joke. (It’s also a pleasant surprise when the parodies stray outside of the world of horror, including an animated musical sequence that’s partly in Korean.) Otherwise, it’s a laundry list of recreations of notable recent genre movies, including The Substance, Terrifier 3, Longlegs, Get Out, Smile, and more.
The film’s attempts to address contemporary identity issues wind up being a very mixed bag: a trans character, for example, doesn’t become the butt of jokes, although Ghostface is further villainized for misgendering him, but a later scene in which a stabbing victim insists on being referred to by the correct pronouns feels clunky and reactionary.
Cinematographer Terry Stacey (Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard) and production designer Nicole Elespuru (Merv) are asked to recreate recognizable cinematic geography — from Scream’s murder house to The Substance’s white-tile bathroom — and their accuracy in doing so enhances the comedy, or at least the familiarity. But director Michael Tiddes (an old hand with the Wayans family, having directed 50 Shades of Black and the two A Haunted House movies) and editor Jonathan Schwartz (I Want You Back) make this a bumpy ride, as it lurches from set-up to set-up and gag to gag without any kind of narrative, thematic, or even tonal throughline from start to finish.
The young players are game enough, but the film really belongs to Faris, Hall, Marlon Wayans, and Shawn Wayans. All four of these performers (plus sister Kim Wayans, who has a memorable cameo as an oblivious nurse) have proven their mettle with more challenging material; one hopes their Scary Movie paycheck gives them the freedom to take on a project where they can play actual characters rather than just cosplay other films amid a barrage of bongs, buttplugs, and shout outs to “Hey, I’ve seen that!”