Scary Movie Review: A Hilarious Horror Parody

The Core Four - Cindy Campbell (Anna Faris), Brenda Meeks (Regina Hall), Ray (Shawn Wayans), and the shapeshifting Shorty (Marlon Wayans, in multiple roles) - have spent 26 years living quiet lives, mostly avoiding masked killers and their own trauma. But a mysterious new antagonist, wearing a conspicuously similar mask to the Ghostface rip-off from the first film, begins picking off a new generation of teens, including Cindy’s daughter Sara (Olivia Rose Keegan) and her diverse friend group - Tuesday (Savannah Lee Nassif), Jack (Cameron Scott Roberts), and a character bluntly credited as DEI (Sydney Park). The plot is a functional clothesline for jokes: the killer’s motive involves “rebooting the franchise,” a gag that lets the film savage everything from Scream VI’s New York setting to The Invisible Man’s high-concept minimalism to the entire Conjuring-verse, complete with Marlon Wayans in Count Brolock’s lace collar. The third act collapses into a sloppy, multi-location chase where no single spoof is given time to breathe, but the emotional center - such as it is - remains Faris’ Cindy, still the deadpan heart of a world gone gloriously insane.

Michael Tiddes, who cut his teeth on the Wayans-incubated A Haunted House films, understands the core rhythm: hit a recognizable trope, stretch it into absurdity, then hit it again with a fart noise. That approach works best when the target is broad and the cast is committed. Faris remains a treasure - her reaction shots alone carry a third of the movie’s weight. Regina Hall, now practically a horror icon in her own right, turns Brenda’s chain-smoking, dead-eyed survivor into a walking punchline who steals every scene she’s in. The Wayans brothers, meanwhile, show their age: Marlon’s manic, multi-character schtick (he plays Shorty, a cop named Joe, a sorority girl named Tiffany, and the aforementioned vampire) lands roughly half the time, which is admirable stamina but also drags the runtime into a bog of overacting.

The script, credited to a rotating board of comedy writers (none of whom are the original Scary Movie team of the Wayans brothers and Phil Beauman), takes a scattershot approach. Early scenes targeting The Menu, Smile, and the A24 aesthetic are surprisingly sharp, skewering arthouse pretension with the same lowbrow glee the original aimed at MTV-era horror. A sequence where a character watches a streaming horror movie and the film itself glitches out into a parody of content warnings is the kind of meta-detour that lands perfectly. But too often, the jokes misfire: a prolonged spoof of M3GAN devolves into a 90-second dance-off, while a Longlegs homage relies on a single, tired Nic Cage impression that feels five years too late.

The film also cannibalizes its own legacy. A very funny cameo from the original franchise’s ghostly “Doofy” (Lochlyn Munro) is undercut by the movie immediately forgetting him. And the pacing is sloppy: the 96-minute runtime feels both bloated (the third act drags through a haunted-house gauntlet) and rushed (character introductions are breathless name-drops). Visually, Tiddes leans hard on neon lighting and Dutch angles, aping the flashy emptiness of modern Blumhouse releases rather than the grimy, early-2000s video-store charm of the original. It looks like a movie that costs more than it should and cares less.

• Pros

  • Anna Faris and Regina Hall are sharp, committed comedians who elevate every scene.
  • The best spoofs (A24 house style, The Menu, content-warning culture) are genuinely clever.
  • Marlon Wayans’ physical comedy and willingness to look completely ridiculous are occasionally inspired.
  • The meta-commentary on legacy sequels and IP reboots is more pointed than most films in this genre.

• Cons

  • The joke density is exhausting - gags land about one in four attempts, with many stretching far past their payoff.
  • The CGI and production design look cheap in a way that undercuts the humor.
  • The third act becomes a chaotic mess of half-finished sketches.
  • Too reliant on dated references and pop-culture callouts that will feel ancient by 2027.

Scary Movie 2026 is a film trapped between two eras: it wants to be a loving parody of modern horror’s self-seriousness, but it also desperately wants to be the crass, unapologetic joke-factory that people remember from 2000. It succeeds only in fits and starts. For every genuine laugh - Cindy’s dry “I’m too old for this franchise” sigh, or a brilliant bit where a character’s phone autocorrects “killer” to “Karen” - there are two minutes of Marlon Wayans shrieking in a fake accent or a CG ghost that looks like a PlayStation 2 cutscene. It’s not unwatchable. It’s not forgettable. It’s just… tired. Not the cast, not the idea, but the sheer weight of having to be everything to everyone. The real horror isn’t the masked killer - it’s the fact that even parody has to reboot itself now. And that, somehow, is the funniest thing about it.