By Simon Thompson
Scary Movie (2026), amongst its many other sins follows the skin crawlingly irritating trend of not being numbered as a sequel despite being the sixth entry in the series. At this point Scary Movie itself is as played out and trite as all of the various horror franchises and tropes that it was parodying back in the 2000s, giving this film all the freshness of a six month old fridge-festering ready meal.
The plot of Scary Movie follows the re-uniting of most of the main characters of the first two movies, Shorty (Marlon Wayans), Cindy (Anna Faris), Ray (Shawn Wayans), and Brenda ( Regina Hall), as a new masked killer has emerged. What follows is a terminally unfunny trudge through various parodies of some of today’s most prominent horror movies (including but not limited to Sinners, Get Out, Weapons, The Substance, the Terrifier franchise, and Longlegs), stooping to some of the weakest attempts at spoofing since the days of Superhero Movie.
Director Michael Tiddes and the Wayans are clearly under the impression that the comedy in this movie is slaying every societal taboo and sacred cow going – but in reality has as much satirical bite, intelligence, and wit as a teenager drawing a dick and balls on their exercise book. Now before you take me for some kind of perma-offended moral busybody, dark/offensive comedy when it’s performed and written by people who know how to structure jokes and deliver them is my favourite style of humour.
To use an example of the offensive comedy done well, Brass Eye Paedogeddon, Chris Morris’s satirical evisceration of how the news creates mass hysteria around serious societal issues. Paedogeddon is a work of comedy genius because of its use of elements such as misdirection, incorporating a deadpan delivery into the ridiculous lines that the actors are delivering, and the fact that Morris managed to dupe actual public figures in Britain into taking it seriously. Scary Movie on the other hand is so blindingly predictable in its execution of its comedy, that you’re insulted by just how obvious every single punchline is.
What makes it all the more frustrating is that the script has this sickeningly pleased with itself level of meta-comedy that wafts through it- which makes its pedestrian writing and its lazy recycling of jokes from the previous entries all the more despicable, but the writing team clearly has the intelligence to know they can do better. As I was watching each dreadful gag unfold one after the other, my mind went to that episode of Futurama, where Zoidberg tries stand-up comedy, predictability failing at it, and when he is subsequently being booed off stage he just delivers his god awful material even louder.
Overall, Scary Movie is a comedy that should’ve been cryogenically frozen in 2007. Its attempts to parody/offend are excruciating, its fourth wall breaking for comedic effect tiresome, and its listless run of celebrity cameos makes for a poor substitute to intelligent writing and heart. An hour and thirty six minutes somehow feels like five just because of how devoid of humour this movie is.
Bloody Flicks 