Courtesy of Paramount Pictures
Jam-packed with a gag-a-minute to the point of exhaustion, “Scary Movie,” directed by Michael Tiddes, storms back into the zeitgeist with the Wayans brothers reclaiming the near-billion-dollar franchise they helped launch in the early 2000s. This time around, their target is the last decade of horror and cultural touchstones, taking aim at everything from the recent “Scream” reboots to “The Substance,” “Get Out,” “Weapons,” and even “Micheal,” which is still playing in theaters. It’s a kitchen-sink approach to parody that leans heavily on greatest hits, legacy cameos, and a no-holds-barred comedic sensibility that defined the original films.
It’s not on the same level as last summer’s surprisingly sharp “The Naked Gun,” but in a landscape where R-rated comedies have all but vanished, there’s an undeniable novelty in watching the Wayans unleash their signature brand of raunchy, slapstick satire again. This is very much their sandbox, even if the result, officially “Scary Movie 6,” feels more like a chaotic victory lap than a focused return to form.
After Keenan Ivory, Shawn, and Marlon were pushed out following the lukewarm reception and quick turnaround to 2001’s “Scary Movie 2,” the franchise drifted into different hands, with David Zucker steering parts 3 through 5 under disgraced mogul Harvey Weinstein’s production banner. While those latter films had their moments, it lacked the sharper, more irreverent edge the Wayans brought to the series. Their return here is both a homecoming and a pointed bit of meta commentary, as the film repeatedly reminds the audience of their past exile. The screenplay, credited to a crowded lineup that includes all three Wayans brothers along with Craig and Rick Alvarez, takes repeated tongue-in-cheek shots at that history, wringing some mild amusement out of industry grievances that longtime fans will recognize.
The real draw, though, is the reunion. Anna Faris, Regina Hall, Shawn Wayans, and Marlon Wayans are all back, joined by returning faces like Dave Sheridan as Officer Doofy, Lochlyn Munro, and Cheri Oteri’s Gail Hailstorm. There are also blink-and-you-miss-it appearances from Chris Elliott and Jon Abrahams. Seeing this group share the screen again brings a jolt of nostalgia that the film leans on heavily, sometimes to its benefit, often as a crutch.
Narratively, the film loosely mirrors “Scream 5,” opening with an attack on a character named Tuesday, a wink at Jenna Ortega’s “Wednesday,” who was also in the recent “Scream” revivals, that’s a little lazy and immediately run into the ground. This thread connects back to Cindy Campbell, with Faris playing her as a Laurie Strode-style recluse, preparing for GhostFace’s inevitable return. Meanwhile, Brenda Meeks has fully embraced a chaotic, scene-stealing persona, with Regina Hall, fresh off starring in Best Picture winner “One Battle After Another,” once again proving she understands exactly how to weaponize the film’s absurdity.
But to call any of this a plot might be giving the movie too much credit. The story exists purely as connective tissue in theory, but in practice, it rarely connects anything. Instead, the film barrels forward as a sequence of loosely assembled bits, each designed to get a quick laugh before abruptly giving way to the next. There’s little sense of escalation, rhythm, or payoff. Jokes don’t build on each other so much as they interrupt each other, creating a start-stop dynamic that undercuts even the stronger material.
That lack of cohesion becomes the film’s defining weakness. The Wayans’ comedy has always thrived on pushing boundaries, blending outrageous physical humor with sharp, often biting cultural commentary. That edge is still here, especially in the way the film pokes at everything from political divisions to toxic masculinity to queer culture, but it often feels scattershot rather than surgical. Without a narrative throughline or even a consistent comedic rhythm, the jokes begin to blur together, losing impact through sheer volume.
To be fair, there are still flashes of inspired absurdity. A sequence involving children accidentally getting into Shorty’s stash and tearing through a neighborhood at night ala “Weapons,” captures the anarchic energy the franchise does best. A bizarre repurposing of Chris Elliott’s Hanson as a “Longlegs” parody lands as one of the film’s more unexpectedly clever turns that doesn’t manifest into anything other than a quick blip on the radar. There’s also an animated K-pop gag that comes out of nowhere and at least earns points for commitment, if not coherence.
But for every joke that lands, there’s another that lingers too long or collapses under its own premise. Much like an overstuffed “Saturday Night Live” episode, the film mistakes quantity for momentum. Instead of building comedic set pieces with a beginning, middle, and end, it delivers fragments, many of which feel like first drafts that were never refined.
The result is a film that is intermittently funny but frequently exhausting. It’s also, at times, aggressively dumb in a way that feels less intentional than simply undercooked. Even the cameos, Easter eggs, and callbacks to earlier Wayans projects, while occasionally delightful, start to feel like filler in a movie that is already struggling to hold itself together.
Ultimately, “Scary Movie 6” is perfectly stupid entertainment, but it’s also frustratingly hollow. It reminds you how effective this kind of parody can be when it has structure and discipline, even as it refuses to provide either. Judging it becomes less about storytelling and more about a simple metric: did it make you laugh?
For me, it did, sporadically. A handful of genuine laughs in a sea of noise. For this franchise, at this point, that might be enough, but it’s hard not to wish the Wayans had brought not just their signature edge, but the precision that once made the laughs land a little harder.
SCARY MOVIE is now playing in theaters.