Scary Movie returns after thirteen years with a joke about returning after thirteen years.
That kind of self-awareness can be useful. The original film understood that parody works best when the target has already become a cultural language. Scream, I Know What You Did Last Summer, and the clichés surrounding them were familiar enough that the Wayans could distort their shapes without explaining every reference. The new film arrives in a culture where jokes, movies, and reactions all expire at roughly the same speed.
Anna Faris and Regina Hall are back as Cindy Campbell and Brenda Meeks, now old enough to have children caught in their own collection of slasher rules. Marlon Wayans and Shawn Wayans also return as Shorty and Ray, helping form a reunion that carries more genuine affection than the film initially admits. Seeing these performers together matters because their timing has not disappeared.
Faris remains one of the most committed physical comedians in American movies. Cindy can misunderstand a threat, overreact to a harmless object, and suffer an injury within the same few seconds, yet Faris never appears to be protecting herself from the stupidity of the joke. She gives every bit complete belief.
Hall is even better. Brenda has always behaved as though she knows she is too charismatic to die in a movie this ridiculous. Hall can turn one suspicious glance into a full argument with the premise, and her reactions remain funnier than many of the written punch lines. The film improves whenever it allows Cindy and Brenda to share a scene instead of separating them to service different references.
The central plot borrows most directly from the recent Scream films, introducing a younger "core four" while bringing the original survivors back into another Ghostface-style mystery. That framework gives the movie a usable structure, but Michael Tiddes and the writers keep abandoning it for extended detours through whatever horror title can be reproduced quickly.
M3GAN, Ma, Get Out, Sinners, The Substance, Weapons, Terrifier, Longlegs, Smile, and Halloween all pass through the film. Some receive full sequences. Others amount to a costume, a line, or a character entering the frame long enough for the audience to recognize the reference. The movie is fluent in what people watched. It is less interested in why those films became worth parodying.
Faris and Hall still know that a stupid joke only works when the performer treats it like the most important thing happening in the world.
The sharpest parody material comes from Sinners, not because the film recreates its images most accurately, but because the Wayans understand the tension between cultural seriousness and shameless commercial imitation. A musical sequence exaggerates the original film's ambition while allowing the performers to commit to its rhythm. It feels like parody rather than summary.
The weaker passages resemble a social media feed projected onto a theater screen. ChatGPT, OnlyFans, COVID, online streamers, "six seven," Drake and Kendrick Lamar, K-pop, Dubai chocolate, Labubu, and January 6 are all referenced. A few land because the cast finds a performance inside them. Most arrive already carrying the exhausted feeling of a joke repeated online for months.
That problem is especially visible in the film's treatment of artificial intelligence. The subject is rich territory for a franchise built around characters misreading reality, but Scary Movie rarely develops a point of view beyond mentioning the technology. The original films were crude, but they often understood the mechanics and hypocrisy of the genres they attacked. This one frequently settles for proof that its writers have heard of the thing.
The return of the Wayans gives the movie a rougher comic energy than Scary Movie 5. The jokes are vulgar, impatient, and willing to fail loudly. That willingness is preferable to the dead air of the previous installment. There are moments when the audience laughs partly from disbelief that a major studio comedy has chosen to say or show something so irresponsible.
The film also repeats attitudes that have aged poorly without always finding a new angle on them. The Wayans have described the project as a challenge to "cancel culture," but offensiveness is not automatically comic invention. Some jokes are funny because they cross a line with precision. Others simply cross it and wait for applause.
Marlon Wayans brings the most chaos, while Shawn remains an effective straight man even when Ray is behaving absurdly. Cheri Oteri, Chris Elliott, Dave Sheridan, and Lochlyn Munro help the reunion feel connected to the earlier films rather than assembled from promotional cameos. The younger cast has less room to establish a comic identity before the next reference arrives.
Tiddes directs with enough pace to keep the misses from becoming painful. At 96 minutes, the film rarely stops moving, although the extended digital version suggests even more material was available. The theatrical cut already feels overfilled. Every additional target weakens the central Scream parody that should be holding the movie together.
The final stretch becomes funnier when the references narrow and the original cast takes control. Cindy and Brenda's friendship remains the closest thing this franchise has to an emotional foundation. Neither woman has grown in a conventional sense, but both have survived a culture that keeps replacing its villains and calling them new.
Scary Movie is better than the fifth installment and less inspired than the first two. That may be enough to revive the series commercially. Artistically, the Wayans still have the nerve. They need a target worth aiming at instead of an entire internet worth naming.
