“Scary Movie”: Autopsy of the Parody Genre on Film
The return of one of the 2000s’ emblems of parody to the big screens had the potential to become a new beginning for modern comedy. Sadly, the latest installment of Scary Movie could not be farther from that.
Once upon a time, when we were not so overtly sensitive, there were movies that dared to make fun of everything, unshackling themselves from the limitations imposed by good taste. There is no better example in existence than the Scary Movie franchise.
Released in the year 2000, the original Scary Movie won over the audience due to its irreverent and incorrect humor. Its surprising success spawned a number of sequels from 2001 to 2013. The Wayans brothers, the creators behind the first movie, only participated in the second installment before abandoning the project. Miramax took over the franchise, releasing three more movies: the third and fourth installments were direct sequels to the Wayans’ work, while the fifth was a reboot with a new cast.
The type of humor the Wayans cultivate has never been my cup of tea, and that is the reason why I never watched these movies growing up, but the trailer for Scary Movie 2026 (which will be referenced as Scary Movie 6 for the purpose of this article) captured my interest. After a decade of putting up with Hollywood’s political correctness, a new Scary Movie could well become the decade’s turning point; a giant middle finger to cancel culture. And that would be something worth watching!
So, with my usual obsessive commitment, I did my homework and watched every single installment back to back to bring you my informed opinion. Oh, the lengths one has to go to be fair sometimes!
Having now a clear overview of the franchise as a whole, I can tell that Scary Movie has never had a very sophisticated sense of humor, but the Wayans leaving triggered a considerable decline in quality. The films stopped making fun of horror cliches, to make fun of anything available instead, and they also started to rely more and more heavily on scatological and physical humor. Scary Movie V, released in 2013, was an all-time low.
I hoped the sixth installment would be a triumphant return both for the Wayans and for real comedy. My disappointment was immense.
What is Scary Movie 6 About?
This time around, the plot revolves mostly around Cindy’s and Brenda’s Gen Z kids. Tuesday, one of Cindy’s daughters, gets attacked in her house, and everybody suspects that it is related to the events that happened in the original film. The two women, along with Ray and Shorty, must discover what is going on before the new Ghostface can get to them.
As in any other modern movie, a number of characters from previous installments get a cameo.
A Million References But Zero Jokes
As I’ve already mentioned, one of the factors that marked the quality decay of Scary Movie as a franchise was the replacement of “jokes about successful horror movies” with “references to any successful movie.”
A filmmaker can reference a project to make fun of some of its characteristics or take advantage of the use of references in creative ways. However, the reference itself is not a joke. Including a reference with no context and with no punch line is lazy writing.
And I get it, it’s Scary Movie; you cannot expect an award-winning script. But the first film (and maybe the second too) managed to make sense within its own chaos. The fun of the first Scary Movie film was the fact that it criticized something very specific: it pointed directly at the 90s slashers and the clichés they popularized. Both Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer were taken as examples. And it worked because the film had a clear purpose: making fun of those projects. The references were used mainly for that.
Scary Movie 6 includes the most impressive list of movie, TV, and pop culture references I have ever seen. Not even Deadpool & Wolverine dared to go so far. In my first viewing alone, I detected references to Wednesday, Terrifier, Sinners, Smile, Get Out, K-Pop Demon Hunters, Michael, Longlegs, The Substance, White Chicks, Brokeback Mountain, Heretic, Weapons, M3gan, Ballerina, John Wick, Candyman, the reboot of I Know What You Did Last Summer (recycling a joke), and a small wink to Wicked. These examples are just from film and TV, and I’m pretty sure I missed some.
But the film does not use those references to make fun of the projects or trends in the genre. There is nothing connecting them to the main plot or to one another. They are simply…there. So we can get excited that we spotted them, I guess. It makes the experience feel redundant and empty.
The Social Media Effect in Parody
The Wayans also missed a really important detail: Humor is not the only thing that has changed; the ways to create and consume humor have done so as well.
Twenty-five years ago, when the choices for entertainment were more limited, pop culture was a shared experience for everyone. The rise of social media has given people the power to create their own pop culture. Even people who use the same platforms can be consuming completely different media, and that fact renders the references a bit obsolete.
To give a clear example, my dad, who is in his mid fifties and usually enjoys this type of humor, has not watched 95% of the films Scary Movie 6 references. Maybe with some luck he will know what the Epstein Files are, if the anchor who delivers the news on cable mentioned it at some point during the last year. If I watched this film with him, he would get bored, because he would understand none of what is happening on screen.
And this is my point: These “easter eggs” are no longer universal. I’ll tell you more: a number of random Internet users have already parodied each one of the film, TV, and cultural moments the movie targets. And they have done a much better job at it!
Gen Z: A Generation in Need of Bullying
This is the area that left me the most disappointed. I was looking forward to Scary Movie 6 being ruthless with the young Gen Z activists: every buzzword, every “social cause,” every pronoun, and every gender issue had to be mocked into oblivion.
But for the most part, the movie does not address the topic at all. The new characters are the kids of the original protagonists, and while I can see the dig at their generation by portraying them as people with anxiety issues who are constantly annoying everyone by bringing up political causes, the script never goes hard on them.
Maybe it is that we have become so used to Gen Z characters being written like that in every movie over the past few years that it no longer counts as parody. Hollywood itself has become a parody. The only time we come close to that is in the scene already teased in the trailer: a young woman lecturing Ghostface about using the correct pronouns while being stabbed by him.
I think the best approach was obvious: they needed to make the parents roast their kids every time they used a buzzword. It wasn’t hard. The first few projects in the franchise made fun of trans people, fat people, gay people, you name it. They were unafraid. Having that track record, the new movie comes across as not only soft but as something worse: cowardly.
The Ending
The only decent joke comes at the very end: the Wayans are Ghostface. They are upset that Cindy and Brenda continued the franchise without them back in the 2000s, so the brothers have come back for revenge.
Cindy’s Gen Z daughters suggest that they can be the new final girls, and the original cast can have supporting roles, as has happened to 80% of franchises in the last decade. Cindy, Brenda, and the Wayans decide they don’t want to give up their spots; Scary Movie is theirs. So they burn the house with Cindy’s daughters inside. The end.
By this stage of the film, I was so sleepy I didn’t even laugh, but the idea is kind of funny.
Critical Reception & Box Office Results
As it has become a tradition with Scary Movie, the critical reception was abysmal. The general audience was more forgiving: comedy is rare these days, and most people are hungry for it.
The result for the first weekend in theaters has been pretty solid: $54,336,626 in the domestic box office, $104,836,626 globally. Headlines were quick to pronounce a verdict: the best opening of the franchise! But hold on, do not get too excited; read the fine print: the best opening of the franchise in nominal figures.
If we compare the box office performance of every installment adjusted for inflation, the results are not as favorable as we are led to believe.
I took the box office history table provided by The Numbers, and I used the Average Ticket Price (ATP) deflation model, relying on historical tracking data from the National Association of Theatre Owners (NATO) and Comscore to calculate both the worldwide box office and the opening weekend numbers adjusted for inflation. I must say I really miss when The Numbers had features that allowed you to do these things directly on their website.
The consolidated data reveals that the original Scary Movie grossed $42,346,669 on its opening weekend in 2000, which adjusted for inflation would be $94,278,298. That is to say, Scary Movie 6 actually fell around 42% short of the original. The best opening weekend of the franchise is still Scary Movie 3 from 2003, amounting to an inflation-adjusted $95,748,796.
My conclusion is that Scary Movie has fallen into the same trap as every other revived franchise. It will make some money, and maybe the studio will want to have a new installment in a couple of years, but the cultural impact will be overshadowed by other forms of comedy. The most the Wayans can aspire to is to milk the format for a few more years, until people get too repulsed by the decreasing quality and start to hate it. They had the chance to be the breaking point for Hollywood’s nonsense, but this movie feels like a partial adhesion to it.
In fact, checking the social media conversation and box office numbers of the last two months, it appears the only people saving entertainment are the YouTubers. Who would have thought?
