Reviews

After the success of the first two Scary Movies in the early 2000s, control of the franchise was taken away from the Wayans family, and three more outings were made without them between 2003 and 2013. Now, after 25 years, the Wayans are back in charge.

This sixth outing, frustratingly called simply Scary Movie, is a combination of a reboot and a sequel, in that it introduces new characters while also maintaining continuity with legacy characters.

Of course, the core four from the first two films are back – Cindy (Anna Faris), Brenda (Regina Hall), her brother Shorty (Marlon Wayans) and her husband Ray (Shawn Wayans). Ray and Shorty are basically still the same, as Ray is still pretending not to be gay (this gets tiresome) and Shorty is still a stoner.

But Cindy and Brenda are a bit different. Cindy (a parody of Scream’s Sidney) now looks like Halloween’s Laurie Strode, living like a recluse in a booby-trapped home waiting for Ghostface’s return, and Brenda looks like Octavia Spencer in Ma and keeps trying to befriend the schoolkids.

In a nod to the film’s main targets, 2022’s Scream and 2023’s Scream VI, they also have children resembling the new characters in those rebooted films. Cindy’s two daughters, Tuesday (Savannah Lee Nassif) and Sara (Olivia Rose Keegan), are parodies of Scream’s Tara (played by Wednesday star Jenna Ortega) and Sam (Melissa Barrera), while Brenda’s children are send-ups of the Meeks-Martin twins.

Like the 2000 original, the story revolves around Ghostface killing the people of Woodsville (aka Woodsboro) again, with familiar faces like Doofy (Dave Sheridan) and Gail Hailstorm (Cheri Oteri) making a return.

But, as to be expected, the film references many other horrors, including Sinners, Weapons, Get Out and The Substance, as well as non-horror films like Michael and John Wick.

The film is basically sketches stitched together very haphazardly to create a feature-length story. Some scenes feel shoehorned in and don’t make a ton of sense within the wider plot, but that’s par for the course with Scary Movie, which is all about laughs over narrative.

This outing features the tagline, “Every line will be crossed,” and they weren’t joking. Some attempts at comedy are offensive, woefully outdated and simply not funny, especially for today’s audience. At times, it feels as if the Wayans’ sense of humour is stuck in the 2000s.

But more often than not, the jokes are hilarious, clever and risky, and they come thick and fast. You will probably need more than one viewing to appreciate all the references and nods littered in here.

It’s a delight to see the core four back together after 25 years and figure out what they’re parodying at each moment.

It’s not a good film by any means, but it’s an entertaining Scary Movie outing, and a return to form after three terrible instalments.

In cinemas from Friday 5th June

By Hannah Wales

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