Cert – 15, Run-time – 1 hour 36 minutes, Director – Michael Tiddes
Ghostface (Dave Sheridan) returns to attack Cindy Campbell (Anna Faris), her friends, family and many horror movies along the way.
Horror films change quickly, as do the trends in them. A lot has changed and released since the last Scary Movie film in 2013, which itself didn’t really seem to tackle many horror film, or laughs, making for one of the worst films ever made.. However, with so much ripe for the picking, and the Wayans brothers returning to write, produce and star, this sixth instalment feels like it has no major interest in the horror films it’s trying to spoof.
Going from an opening featuring Teyana Taylor making references to last year’s One Battle After Another, and this year’s awards season, we then get extended scenes almost directly copying instead of parodying films that even The Simpsons have already spun on. The reboot-quel scene from 2022’s Scream is recreated seemingly with only the purpose of reaching the punchline ‘re-booty call’. Meanwhile a baffling joke about It Follows claims there’s no flashback or scene riffing on it because nobody saw it – the sequel is set to begin filming later this year.
Yet, as Ghostface (voiced by Dave Sheridan) returns to attack Cindy Campbell (Anna Faris) and her children, Sara (Olivia Rose Keegan) and legally-distinct Tuesday (Savannah Lee Nassif), there’s a sense that, like with some horror franchises, some things don’t change. Unfortunately, in the case of Scary Movie it’s still making running jokes about characters being gay and thinking they’re hiding it despite obvious actions and dialogue. A baffling scene about pronouns feels stale and increasingly confusing the longer it goes on as to what the actual joke is meant to be as a group of people stab someone who points out they go by they/them.
The result is a jumble of gags and references which never take off, and, again, feel far from interested in horror films, instead starting to guess and just hope for the best. Leaning back into gay or weed jokes, wrapping up with a rushed conclusion about its own meta state and the Wayans, Farris and Regina Hall’s relationships with the franchise. The later pair, amongst new and returning characters, and simply drawn out one-note sequences, feel like they get rather little screen-time, especially for the deal the film wants to make about them by the end.
The Scary Movie franchise certainly hasn’t been as bad as the new kind of spoof film that it ushered in with titles such as Date Movie, Epic Movie, Meet The Spartans and The Starving Game following in its wake. It doesn’t entirely rely on making a reference to another film and hoping that’s enough, although that feeling does often crop up. There are other kinds of jokes, the problem is none of them gain a laugh. This latest instalment admittedly has two jokes, one a very quick mention for Tubi, that in a more amusing film could gain laughs, but the laboured surroundings stop them from working here. Seemingly being moved on from so quickly in order to cut to another overlong parody sequence encompassing roughly one joke.
If there was more attachment to what’s being parodied, and things seemed a bit more direct instead of thrown in by the team of five writers, then there may be more chance of laughs and overall entertainment. However, Scary Movie feels laboured and lazy in its often drawn-out, sometimes confusing attempts at gags. Its ‘nobody’s safe’ attitude feels forced, and regularly stuck in the 2000s, there’s little shock value to the same recycled gay joke or Ghostface getting high, again. The horror landscape has, as always, continued to change and develop. Scary Movie has not.
Despite the same recycled gay and weed jokes; jumbled one-note references to more recent horror films, with which the film has little interest in, Twitch and baffling pronoun gags remind that this is a 2026 Scary Movie, not one from the 2000s. Tackling elevated horror hasn’t risen the amount of laughs in this franchise.
Just A Little Bit Random 