In the spirit of Scary Movie (now on VOD platforms like Prime Video), we should pronounce the surname of its director, Michael Tiddes, as (insert vulgar euphemism for breasts here). The sixth film in the spoof franchise marks the return of the Wayans Brothers, who wrote/directed/produced the first two entries, which lampooned the self-aware Scream movies, adding another layer of self-awareness to the comedy, thus leading to third and fourth and fifth layers of self-awareness as Scary Movie Twenty Twenty-Six references not only itself and the early Scream movies, but also the newer Scream revival/legacy sequel movies and the first two Scary Movies. And the result is conceptually incoherent, but that may be the point, along with the usual shotgunned array of lowest-of-lowbrow jokes and cheap gags at the expense of other popular movies, be they horror or otherwise. So as usual, it’s all a matter of counting how many of those jokes actually make us laugh.
SCARY MOVIE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The Gist: Is it a spoiler to reveal who’s in the opening scene of Scary Movie? The star who’s coming off an Oscar nomination for One Battle After Another and is pretty funny while delivering the lines “I’m starring in the opening scene” and “Even my abs got abs!”? How about naming the celeb who plays the bartender serving them a drink? Eh, I’ve probably said enough. But I will reveal that the whole scene isn’t the real opening scene to Scary Movie but is in fact the opening scene to the movie within Scary Movie, called Horror Movie, and the real opening scene features a character named Tuesday (Savannah Lee Nassif), because the name Wednesday would bring up legal copyright issues, as one fourth-wall-breaking aside will eventually remind us, because the movie apparently thinks we’re too dumb to get the joke. Where was I? I’m all pretzeled up — and too busy untangling myself from the web of references-within-references-within-references to laugh.
Right: Tuesday becomes the latest victim of the killer, who looks like exactly Ghostface from the Scream movies, and even is referred to as Ghostface in case there’s any question as to the origin of Ghostface, and also is the object of a Ghostface Killah Wu-Tang Clan joke so we’re absolutely crystal clear as to who the particular Ghostface this movie is barely even spoofing. So, Tuesday. She survives and her sister Sara (Olivia Rose Keegan) comes back to town with her boyfriend Jack (Cameron Scott Roberts) to deal with the return of Ghostface, which requires reuniting with her estranged mother, Cindy, marking Anna Faris’s return to the franchise, playing the nutcase shut-in spoof of Jamie Lee Curtis in the most recent trilogy of Halloween movies. And Faris is the nut graf in this movie’s reunion of OG cast members, including Marlon Wayans as stoner Shorty, Shawn Wayans as closeted gay man Ray (who’s become a walking slapdash reference to Sinners), and somehow Regina Hall gets wedged in here as Brenda (who’s a walking slapdash reference to… Octavia Spencer in Ma? Okey dokey).
And from here the plot plays out as a series of roughly stapled-together vignettes poking fun at Terrifier, Get Out, The Shape of Water, Michael, The Substance, M3GAN, Candyman, 12 Years a Slave, KPop Demon Hunters, Longlegs, and It Follows, although that last one is the only decent joke of the bunch, since it actually has enough chutzpah to namedrop the most influential film in the neo-horror canon and discard the reference because the movie’s “too obscure.” That’s a joke with teeth. The rest of them, though? Well, they implicate the cast — and bit players like Cheri Oteri, Sydney Park, Kim Wayans, Damon Wayans Jr. and Chris Elliott (!) — in their wearisome laziness. But hey, somehow, this is all more coherent and entertaining than Scream 7, although admittedly, that really isn’t saying much.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of? Go fire up The Blackening to see a movie that actually understands satire.
Performance Worth Watching: I’ve come around to Anna Faris since her rom-com and dumb-com days of the 2000s; she’s effortlessly funny in a few bits here, although it’s rather far from the career-revival prestige film she likely deserves.
Sex And Skin: A cunnilingus scene featuring a lobster bib, a fat doob and lots of pubes.
Our Take: We are so doomed. It’s been 26 years since the first Scary Movie, and 13 since the previous one — time is increasingly meaningless, isn’t it? — and we get a revival (or in the parlance of the Scary Movie Twenty Twenty-six script, a “rebootiquel,” which leads to a line coining the phrase “rebooty call”) of a movie ruthlessly ribbing a revival of a franchise because it revived itself. It’s the conceptual equivalent of a panic attack. And the whole shebang, from Scary Movie (The New One) (As In 2026) to the three recent Scream flicks it’s spoofing, is utterly gassed for ideas. Four movies, and about four decent jokes among them. And here I report the depressing fact that The New But Also Old Scary Movie grossed $230 million worldwide during its theatrical run, roughly septuple its budget. Doomed, I say!
But that’s the macro of the situation, and my aforementioned thesis focused on the micro. And I wouldn’t want my prof to give me a D-minus, so I better follow through on that: Three. That’s how many jokes I laughed at here. One involves the cold-open star’s wielding of a Golden Globe as a cudgel. Another is the spoof of The Substance in which packing peanuts are inside the body of the Demi Moore analog character. And the third is a dig at the movie cliche in which alcoholics’ cars are full of empties. Faris gets out of her vehicle and an avalanche of cans and bottles tumbles out, including a beer keg, and it’s a big one, no quarter-barrels in this gag. Too bad the rest of the jokes are quarter-written, a bunch of movie references that throw shade at popular movies by acknowledging their existence with nary an inkling of satirical commentary. It’s as if the movie wants to be mean and vicious in a celebrity roast kind of way, but doesn’t know how.
And within those spoofs — which play out like a series of SNL sketches relegated to the show’s final 20 minutes — are a bunch of jokes that seek to take no prisoners and offend everyone, but come off like Dracula forgot his dentures and is just sloppily and fruitlessly gumming on people’s necks. You’ve got your gay jokes, your trans jokes, your covid jokes, your Fox News jokes, and all of them are incoherent. They mingle with bodily fluid gags, Looney Tunes-derived exaggerated physical comedy, an Epstein files bit, wearisome burnout/stoner fodder, shots at Diddy and Kanye and miscellaneous dildo- and toilet-derived raunch, and the result is as limp and wearisome as any other lame-o Scary Movie.
Silver lining: The fact that Tiddes and the Wayans Bros. (all credited producers and writers here) squeeze in a Michael vignette (that drops the ball by not being brave enough to be truly critical of the film’s rampant problematicism) shows the filmmakers’ ability to be remarkably current. But they’re not current enough to nod at Backrooms or Obsession, two pretty damn good horror films that mark the future of the genre. Their success also provides fodder for another inevitable Scary Movie, probably next year. Like I said: Doomed.
Our Call: A little effort might go a long way, but why futz with a financially successful formula? SKIP IT.
John Serba is a freelance film critic from Grand Rapids, Michigan. Werner Herzog hugged him once.
