The spoof movie had a really big peak in the early 2000s. It was in 2000 that the first Scary Movie took direct aim spoofing horror films, with a direct focus on parodying Scream in particular in a comedy way (ironically Scream is very much parodying horror films itself while still being a horror). The film was extremely successful on a budget of around $17 million, it took over $275 million. This quickly led to a sequel a year later, which despite a bigger budget only earned about half the box office earnings. It was then a couple of years later before Scary Movie 3 and Scary Movie 4, and then an influx of spoof movies including Date Movie, Disaster Movie, Superhero Movie, Epic Movie, Meet the Spartans, all before returning to Scary Movie 5. None of these films particularly seemed to hit the sweet spot that was successfully achieved with the first entry. 13 years on, and the horror genre is currently having a large peak in the cinema industry with multiple reboots, sequels and some of the most entertaining pieces of media of the year. It makes sense that it’s a perfect time, with lots of content to parody, for the Scary Movie franchise to return.
I would normally do a plot summary here, but there isn’t much of a plot in these films. It pretty much tries to follow the plot of Scream (2022) and chucks in parodies of films like Halloween, Get Out, The Substance, Sinners, and many many more.
I don’t really know what I expected. Like most people, I enjoyed the first couple of these films, before they turned into some of the laziest films this industry has produced. I’m really glad they eventually learnt the lesson, and people stopped watching them. However, there is clearly an audience still there for these films. I don’t directly have a problem with them especially if we don’t see them every year and like I said, this is the perfect timing really for this type of film, I get it. It still just isn’t for me. Aside from a couple of jokes (particularly one unexpected KPop Demon Hunters scene), a lot of the jokes don’t land. I was worried about this from the first trailer where it came in with an easy, unfunny, late if anything joke about pronouns. The film was written by the Wayans Brothers, and just ultimately feels like they are trying to recapture the magic they were able to in the early 00’s, and have been desperate to refind that hit.
The cast in these films are doing a certain type of acting that is never going to be anything that is seen as groundbreaking, or award worthy. They all do seem to be relatively on the same level at least, which is just trying to be over the top, and I’m sure they had a great time on set making this. There is no character development, to give any acting a chance, and the jokes are often so simple that not even the comedians on the cast can deliver them effectively. The focus is on the jokes, rather than the cast.
Honestly, I don’t have much to say on this film, because it’s so surface level. It was so predictable and didn’t deliver on what could’ve been. It is watchable, and there are much worse films in this series that can’t even do that. It does scratch a little nice itch of nostalgia for these films, but if I never saw one of these films again, I’m okay.
Overall, Scary Movie does a serviceable job that disappoints at a time of peak horror. I genuinely think with good comedy writers (which, yes is opinion based) this could’ve been great, focusing on a few films and pop culture moments rather than parodying 100 things at once. I don’t think this will be enough to see a resurgence in this type of spoof at least.
What did you think of Scary Movie?
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