Scary Movie 6 is being billed as just Scary Movie on IMDb despite the fact that it is the sixth installment of a tired franchise that was pretty much DOA back in the year 2000 when it first originated.
In that year, though, there were recent films like The Blair Witch Project and The Sixth Sense, which begged for parodies of them. So, the first movie pretty much fit the bill for what audiences wanted, regardless of how unfunny it actually was.
This new film comes on the heels of great horror movies like Weapons and Sinners. However, it doesn’t really spoof them in successful enough ways to warrant this new parody movie’s existence.
This latest sequel opens with Teyana Taylor (Oscar nominee for her work in One Battle After Another) being a good sport and playing the film’s first “victim.” She’s the best part of the movie, bar none, as she summons a bunch of guys to come beat up Ghostface in a dark alley. Taylor’s Oscar loss factors into a joke in the film, and it sort of works.
Directed by Michael Tiddes, the new comedy introduces many new characters, including a spin-off of Wednesday Addams, Tuesday (Savannah Lee Nassif), who the movie clearly states sports that name here for “legal reasons.”
Previous characters played by Regina Hall (also of One Battle After Another) and Anna Faris are back again and have a blast doing nothing particularly memorable this time out.
Marlon Wayans plays his main character as a high school student in a funny bit in the movie, and the film suggests the Wayans brothers are taking back the franchise after sitting out the last installment or two. They’re more than welcome to this franchise, but maybe they were blessed they weren’t part of a couple of the other entries in this mostly laugh-free film series.
The funniest scenes in the new Scary Movie revolve around the old characters suggesting they deserve more attention than the new ones. And the film’s big plot reveal works around that fact in a way that can be somewhat humorous at times.
The Sinners and Weapons parodies here fall completely flat in scenes that don’t work and just copy elements of the aforementioned films without adequately proving why those movies deserve to be spoofed.
More successful is the nod to The Substance with Cheri Oteri’s character, Gail Hailstorm, getting lip enlargements and facing the consequences of her desires to change her looks.
This scene is rather successful for its spot-on commentary, even if it hardly is a great sequence in a film filled with mediocre attempts at humor.
Scary Movie 6 has many, many attempts at sexual humor and hammers home quips at intercourse and STDs, like in a K-Pop Demon Hunters spoof that is initially funny, but ultimately too over-the-top to work. The film successfully nods to the hit song from that animated movie with an imitation that just feels too crass to score a home run in the laughs department.
Scary Movie 6 poses the question of how many times a movie can repeat the same types of racial and sexual jokes to fill 96 minutes. The film outstays its welcome even though there are funnier scenes towards the film’s conclusion than at the beginning.
Ghostface gets a few laughs here. A lot of people dress up as the killer this time out, so this movie has fun with that fact. Our Ghostface characters get beaten up a lot, and that could put a smile on less demanding audiences’ faces.
This film also takes “stabs” at Nicolas Cage’s Longlegs in a scene set at a bus stop. Unfortunately, that scene is just as flat as many of the attempts at humor that saturate Scary Movie 6.
Essentially, Scary Movie 6 is just making a checklist of raunchy sex jokes to tell and checking off another list of successful horror movies that it makes nods to. Some jokes hit, and some don’t.
A particularly funny joke about how many women Charlie Sheen has slept with could provoke laughter, but since it comes so late in the movie, the joke may be too little, too late.
Scary Movie 6 is simply a been-there, done-that sequel that tries to present a horror movie spoof for modern-day audiences.
If you’ve never seen a Scary Movie before, you may like some scenes in this one. But it’s doubtful you’ll ever watch another sequel in this weary franchise.
Scary Movie 6 is now playing in theaters!
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Thomas Duffy
Thomas Duffy is a Critics Choice member who has written film reviews for most of his life, starting at age 11 when he crafted his first full length movie critique on the film, "Roxanne," a Cyrano story featuring Steve Martin. As a result of that review and other movie obsessive writing, Thomas was awarded a creative writing award in sixth grade. Thomas is the proud author of nine books, including two highly acclaimed novels, "To Never Know" and "Social Work." Thomas can be found on X (formerly known as Twitter) or at a New York City movie theater watching the latest hit or independent movie. You can also run into him at Tribeca or at the New York Film Festival.