Ticketworthy - Scary Movie

Parody has a long tradition in Hollywood. Mel Brooks did it masterfully for years, as did the Naked Gun franchise, Hot Shots!, Shaun of the Dead, and countless others. Among the list of those films is the original Scary Movie, created by the Wayans brothers in 2000. Its brand of humor was certainly not for everyone, but its success is hard to argue with. The number of sequels and copycat films that it launched is nearly unmatched and many of its jokes are still quoted today. I wish I could say that the 2026 reboot, also titled Scary Movie, is going to have the same fate, but I suspect not. Its main issue is simple; despite drowning in jokes, it’s just not that funny.

Though story is obviously not that important in a spoof film, Scary Movie does like to pretend it has one. This installment sees the Ghostface Killer return to terrorize Sara (Olivia Rose Keegan) and Tuesday (Savannah Lee Nassif), the daughters of the original film’s protagonist, Cindy (Anna Faris). The characters from the first film have to reunite to stop the killer from murdering a new generation of victims.

Keegan is one of the few bright spots in the film, turning in a performance that is leagues better than the movie she’s in. Not only is she channeling a young Anna Faris brilliantly, so much so that it is genuinely surprising that the two are not actually related, but she’s one of the few cast members whose jokes consistently land. Her comedic timing and delivery are fantastic. If even one other person were as good as her, it would have done wonders for the entire endeavor.

Sadly, I can’t say that anyone else rises to the challenge. The new cast gets very little screentime to make any kind of impression, while the original characters spend entirely too much of theirs pointing at one another and saying some variation of “Oh wow, you’re in this movie too!” They all get so few decent jokes and, outside of Marlon Wayans, none of them seem particularly committed to making the ones they do have work. To his credit, Wayans is at least making an effort as weed-enthusiast Shorty. It’s a schtick that isn’t terribly creative, doesn’t produce many laughs, and wears out its welcome pretty fast, but at least he seems to be trying. That counts for something.

Not every joke is a dud, of course. It’d be almost impossible for a movie that is basically an hour-and-a-half of nonstop quips and bits to not have at least a few winners. There’s a running gag about how Sara’s boyfriend is obviously the killer that gets funnier every time it gets brought up. I also loved a bit near the beginning where the characters are at a Final Destination theme park where the rollercoasters repeatedly crash in the background. Wayans even gets a hilarious sequence riffing on K-Pop Demon Hunters that got a few genuine laughs out of me. These moments highlight what Scary Movie can be at its best.

It’s a shame that is so rarely at its best. Most of the rest of the jokes are just characters dressing up or acting out scenes from other horror movies. No punchlines, no humor, just showing you that the Wayans’ also watched Scream and Sinners. Good parody is supposed to have something to say, to point out the absurdities of the material. Scary Movie just copies scenes from those movies outright, then has a character fall down or make a gay joke that wasn’t original 20 years ago. It wants to be edgy and controversial, but it does and says nothing that we haven’t seen and heard hundreds of times by now. There’s no bite or wit to any of it.

In the last few years, we’ve gotten plenty of iconic horror movies. They are just begging for somebody to come along and poke fun at them the way that great spoof movies have done in the past. While there are probably plenty of Scary Movie fans perfectly happy with how it handled that job, I found myself repeatedly disappointed with its efforts and very rarely amused. It’s a missed opportunity and a dull, unfunny mess whose biggest joke is making us watch.