Criticizing a “Scary Movie” is a lot like giving Julius Caesar’s eulogy. It may seem like critics are burying these crass, foolish parodies, but really, we’re paying them the ultimate compliment. These “Scary Movies” don’t exist to be taken seriously. If they make any statement at all, they’re saying nothing deserves be taken seriously. So anyone who does take them seriously — including me, a guy who started his “Scary Movie” review with a William Shakespeare reference — sounds like a jackass. Critics aren’t in on the joke, we are the joke. A bad review for “Scary Movie” is like giving it five stars.
So the weird thing is, this new “Scary Movie” is probably the funniest one, at least since the original. It’s been thirteen years since “Scary Movie 5,” which means there’s a huge backlog of horror movies to lampoon. “Scary Movie 6” mostly riffs on the “requel” trend, where overdue sequels act as a brand new chapter and quasi-remake all at once. David Gordon Green’s “Halloween” and Tyler Gillett and Matt Bettinelli-Olpin’s “Scream” are the parody’s primary targets, and like those films, “Scary Movie” is about the same old protagonists teaming up with new, younger heroes to fight the same old villain.
Anna Faris is still Cindy Campbell, who survived the other “Scary Movies.” Then again, so did almost everyone else, including characters who died once or twice before. She’s been living in a boobytrapped house for years, sometimes falling in her own spike pit, while her estranged daughters live their own lives. Tuesday (Savannah Lee Nassif) is attacked at the beginning of the movie. She survives, which brings her older sister Sara (Olivia Rose Keegan) back to town to reunite with her estranged mom and get revenge.
Other characters return, like Shorty (Marlon Wayans), who’s still in high school, and Ray (Shawn Wayans), who’s still gay, which the new movie still thinks is funny. Nothing derails the latest “Scary Movie” like its boomer-ish belief that the franchises’ tired old offensive gags are still relevant. Except when it takes cheap, mean shots at genuinely endangered communities. Benny Zielke plays a trans-masc teenager who the film treats with relative respect. (“Relative” does a lot of heavy lifting.) But another character reveals they’re non-binary and gets publicly slaughtered by a large number of people, just because they asked for their pronouns to be respected, and the movie goes out of its way to suggest that murderous rage is justified.
“Scary Movies” have always pushed the edge, but it’s rarely been that mean-spirited. It’s the only scene in any “Scary Movie” which is arguably scary, because it’s punching down, way down, at real victims of violence; and unlike the other controversial gags, the tone is uncomfortably sinister. It’s a short scene, but it leaves such a bad taste that it’s hard to enjoy what comes afterwards. Still, the film’s ending takes big, anarchic swings that explain why “Scary Movie” is the way it is, and why so many requels sideline young cast members and contemporary issues, just to stroke the egos of old stars and reassure the aging fanbase that they’ll never have to grow up.
In the process, “Scary Movie” shows its whole ass, along with the collective asses of Hollywood at large. The “Scary Movies” take things people love, or at least give a damn about, and reduce them to bodily fluid and weiner jokes. It dismisses the art people care about and the issues people care about, and never once suggests we should care about anything else instead. When used in moderation, this attitude is kinda punk rock. “Scary Movie” defies the system, weaponizing its own cheap sloppiness to show how little effort it takes to entertain the masses and how little the effort exerted by other artists even matters.
On the other hand, “Scary Movie” led to a sequel, and another sequel, and another, and endless “[Blank] Movie” spinoffs. The parodies became what they always hated. You can’t take credit for sledgehammering the system after you, yourself, become the system, especially if you’re not even the part that tries very hard. The laziness of these parody films, which rarely do more than point at other movies and giggle, was briefly their strength, and then forever their kryptonite. It wasn’t long before the message that “movies suck” lost all its power. Now all that remains is a bunch of sucky movies, which themselves deserve mockery.
Sucky or not, “Scary Movie” is still a broad comedy, and a lot can be forgiven if it’s funny. It’s frequently funny. Some of the jokes backfire, horribly, and others are so tired they’re pathetic, but one out of every four punchlines hits hard. The celebrity cameo in the pre-credits sketch is inspired, and whenever “Scary Movie” falls back on old-fashioned slapstick, the comedic timing and Looney Tunes physics are hilarious as hell. The old cast knows how to make bad jokes work, or at least how to get away with them, and the new cast is extremely game. Olivia Rose Keegan is the standout, adopting Anna Faris’ line delivery and mannerisms while making her bitter, pill-popping hero amusing all on her own.
Yes, for better or worse, “Scary Movie” is back. But it’s trying to revive the franchise, not update it. If anything, the film’s stubborn insistence that nothing about “Scary Movie” needs to change and it’s the children who are wrong now makes its profane and controversial jokes feel conservative. This is a movie where people drown in vaginal fluid and have orgiastic sex with popular cartoon characters. Twenty-six years ago, that would have enraged every right wing pundit in America. Now they’re the target demographic. Maybe “Scary Movie” hasn’t changed, but the world sure has, and the old yucks don’t play the same anymore. (And they weren’t all that great to begin with.)
