‘Scary Movie’ Is Back! Bring on the Dick Jokes!

Going My Wayans

The Wayan brothers return with another parody of slasher flicks and horror-film clichés. And this time, it's personal

I mean, it’s only fair, right? If there is going to be a whole slew of rebooted slasher-flick sequels — your Scream Nos. 6 & 7, your I Know What You Did Last Summer No. 4 — hitting multiplexes like a plague of locusts, why not bring back the parody series that ran more or less parallel to those movies? Shouldn’t the Wayan family, who started this successful Scary Movie franchise back in 2000 (only to have it be taken from them it by a different set of siblings), be able to reclaim what’s rightfully theirs? Why can’t every other horror film of the past 13 years, along with a host of other post-Covid pop-culture touchstones, get the exact same ribbing that the Nineties’ ones did? Don’t we, the regular consumers of moving-picture entertainments, deserve our fair share of high-quality dick jokes?!

Rest assured, you will get those in Scary Movie, which is technically the sixth entry in the franchise, the third one to involve the Wayans, and the first one to feature a livestream in which people take turns hitting each other in the head with a pool noodle. There will be a cold opening featuring a celebrity that makes fun of the usual cold openings featuring celebrities popularized by the Scream movies, and while we’re not going to spoil which famous person graces it, we will say: Viva la revolución! (Also, this actor 100-percent shoulda won an Oscar.)

There will be a reunion of the original’s “core four,” per usual for these reboot sequels, or as Marlon Wayans‘ resident cannabis connoisseur Shorty Meeks calls them, “rebootiquels.” Shorty’s back, with a vengeance. So is Ray Wilkins (Shawn Wayans), the former high school football hero who has a tortuous relationship with his sexuality and the closet. Ditto Cindy Campbell (Anna Faris) and Shorty’s sister Brenda Meeks (Regina Hall), the series’ dual final-girl stand-ins. Both of them made appearances in the post-Wayans’ entries, which is a running joke — they got paid a lot of money to be in them! Say goodbye to the fourth wall here.

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Seeing Faris resurrect her ditzy-chick act — as well as riffing on Jamie Lee Curtis’s survivalist badass from the rebooted Halloween movies — and Hall flex her broad-comedy chops once again are the two big reasons to see this past the usual rat-a-tat slew of gags. The rebootquel era runs on nostalgia, pairing O.G.s with new faces and fresh meat, and watching Faris and Hall play off each other is a pure, non-guilty pleasure. Both of them are pros at this. Shorty gets the big stoner jokes, Ray provides the uncomfortable, wait-is-this-affectionate-or-offensive pokes at LGBTQ+ lifestyles (though the movie is extremely trans-friendly, even if it does include digs at pronouns and Gen-Z sensitivities), and everything from Longlegs to Sinners to the recent Michael Jackson biopic gets a nod. Mileage seriously varies in terms of the funny here. If you don’t laugh at one bit, don’t worry, because another dozen or two will come flyin’ atcha in a minute. But every time Faris and Hall are onscreen together, Scary Movie comes the closest to hitting a groove. They know how to sell the Wayans’ oh-shiiiiit! sense of shock humor.

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And there will be jokes about dicks: big dicks, micropenises, weaponized dildos, wanting dicks, not wanting dicks, getting kicked in the crotch, you name it. Forget it, Jake, it’s Scary Movie. What did you expect, no dick jokes?!

Four Wayans are listed in the writing credits, along with screenwriter Rick Alvarez; the director, Michael Tiddes, has worked with Marlon on a bunch of other projects. And while we personally have a weakness for the extended visual gags behind the “Final Destination Amusement Park” set piece and the brief but inspired take-off on Weapons, the best bits here involve the behind-the-scenes drama regarding the series itself. The Wayans have a few old scores to settle, and old friends and past cast members aren’t immune from getting raked over the coals. There are meta jokes about horror movies, and then there are meta jokes about how some folks still cashed checks over something that was more or less stolen from its creators. It’s the same ol’ Scary Movie method of throwing everything at the wall and prizing velocity and quantity over quality. But this time, it’s personal.