In a Scary Movie, no one is safe from skewering, and that includes the characters as well as its viewers. It has been 20 years since the entire gang of Cindy (Anna Faris), Brenda (Regina Hall), Shorty (Marlon Wayans), and Ray (Shawn Wayans) survived the haunting at Hell House. Both Cindy and Brenda are mothers now. The traumas Cindy experienced have compromised her ability to be a good mother and created a distant relationship with daughters Sara (Olivia Rose Keegan) and Tuesday (Savannah Lee Nassif). As for Brenda, her twin children are the jock Brad (Gregg Wayans) and the social activist “Dei” (Sydney Park). Shorty, still toking every waking minute, is still in high school, and Ray claims to have figured out his sexuality.

They’re all brought back together as Ghostface has returned to their town of Woodsville and begins wrecking havoc. As only the foursome can, they’ll work together—or not—to protect each other and maybe reclaim a franchise, too.

It’s been almost a full 25 years since Scary Movie 2, the last time the Wayans family was a part of the franchise. Removing that factoid, the last time a Scary Movie was released was 2013’s Scary Movie 5, widely regarded as the worst of the franchise. The good news? It’s a commercial win, and Scary Movie 6, simply titled Scary Movie to ride the wave and joke about legacy sequels, comes at a time when horror has only grown in stature with no shortage of movies to parody. The bad news? Laughs connect at an extremely low rate.

Director Michael Tiddes has been a frequent collaborator of Marlon’s, and again, he’s directing a spoof here. The filmmaking of Scary Movie films have always straddled the line of exactly remaking the scenes they’re lifting from by filming them in the same depth, angles, etc., while turning the volume up just enough to an exaggerated effect, whether that be extending the scene to overkill, adding a couple of physical gags, and using a mix of sometimes abrupt and sometimes seamless editing (remember how the basketball scene from SM2 originates?) to garner laughs. However, directing has never been the determining success factor of these features. That would fall to the writing.

What makes one laugh as they get older changes over time. As a preteen/teenager, I had fun times that are now core memories watching Scary Movie 1, 2, 3, and 4 on DVD, in a theater, and network television with my sister. Sure, it was dumber, lowest common denominator humor with a lot of physical gags and a bevy of coarse language, but whether we were easier to please back then or just depended on movies more when we wanted unvarnished comedy, I remember going back to these consistently and being quotable for a time. Yet at their dumbest, the early movies in the franchise still carried simple plotting and story progression that made the movies feel like…well, movies.

Much of the marketing and taglines of the latest Scary Movie have directly and indirectly referenced that the film would be anti-politically correct, and sure, while there’s some “edgy” humor, many of the jokes and dialogue written by Marlon, Shawn, Craig Wayans, Keenan Ivory Wayans, and Rick Alvarez induce more groans and eye rolls than belly laughs. References to Terrifier 3, Sinners, Final Destination: Bloodlines, Get Out, Longlegs, Smile, and The Substance, and even John Wick are all here (folded into the narrative that mainly pulls from 2022’s Scream and 2018’s Halloween), but from scene to scene, there’s nowhere near enough cohesion to not make this feel like an isolated set of sketches seen on Saturday Night Live or In Living Color.

The weird decision is made too by the writers to fill Scary Movie to the brim with meta references and Deadpool-like fourth wall breaks, something that never really existed previously in the franchise. The usage here comes off as more of an awkward way for the Wayans to get their (fair) frustration off their chests from being away from the series for so long, and a couple of low-hanging fruit digs at Gen Z because why not. Too much screen time is given to Marlon’s Shorty, his stoner persona showing its age with the legalization of weed. His expanded presence along with the reduced presence of Hall and Faris throws the film too far out of balance; even when Shorty and Ray were at their best it was as tertiary and quaternary characters. Scary Movie is at its best at the end, as the final 10-12 minutes legitimately caught my theater and I off guard with the meta script and inside baseball approach working the cleanest and operating at its most funniest.

There’s something victorious about Marlon, Shawn, and the Wayans family clan reacquiring creative control of the Scary Movie franchise after all these years. To their credit, they and none of the cast looks to be visibly phoning it in, and everyone appears to be having fun, especially the OG’s reuniting. Disappointedly, their collective fun does not convert into a consistent comedy movie that’ll be remembered more than the first few installments. You could make the case that it’s a better Scream movie than Scream 7 is. It’s harder to make the case that it’s anything more than that.

D

Photo credits go to impawards.com, ew.com, mediapost.com, and digitalspy.com.