The first Scary Movie is an undeniable 21st-century cultural touchstone. It is a shamelessly raunchy, endlessly quotable (and crucially, gif-able) horror parody of ’90s slasher films like Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer, and the film’s now-iconic characters and singular sense of humor came courtesy of the Wayans Family. If Scream was, in its own right, a self-aware sendup of ’90s slashers, Scary Movie was an Inception-level, fourth-wall-breaking parody firing with the precision accuracy of a shotgun.
26 years later, the Scary Movie franchise has continued to evolve and transform in parallel with the genre it parodies: from the teen slashers of the ’90s to the gore-heavy ‘torture-porn’ of Saw in the early 2000s and the Paranormal Activity supernatural found-footage boom of the 2010s. The franchise itself has developed its own internal mythos and behind-the-scenes shuffles, with key creatives and stars moving in and out between installments. The Wayans Family departed the franchise after Scary Movie 2, while stars Anna Faris (Cindy Campbell) and Regina Hall (Brenda Meeks) hung on until Scary Movie 5.
But with Marlon, Shawn, Keenen Ivory and Craig Wayans (alongside Rick Alvarez) returning to write the sixth Scary Movie film (simply titled Scary Movie), director Michael Tiddes back at the helm, and the (much-needed) return of Faris and Hall, Scary Movie (2026) is a welcome return to form that course-corrects in a customarily self-aware, fourth wall-breaking fashion. Taking aim at so-called “elevated horror” films like Get Out, Longlegs, and Smile, the film delivers a crop of new horror (and wider film industry) parodies at its familiar breakneck pace.
Make no mistake, a return to the Wayans’ crude, distinctly 2000s sense of humor isn’t going to win over any already reticent viewers. (Especially with the film clocking in at an hour and 45 minutes, a solid 20 minutes longer than every other installment.) And when the gags fall flat, they really fall flat. But when the Wayans take aim at specific characters, films, or genre trends rather than falling back on sex and/or gross-out humor, Scary Movie delivers on its promise of crowd-pleasing, no-holds-barred, “everyone is a potential target (even ourselves)” parody.
Echoing the plot of Scream 5 (which was similarly styled as simply “Scream”), Scary Movie follows the moody, drug-addicted Sara (Olivia Rose Keegan), whose mother Cindy is now a paranoid shut-in a la Final Destination: Bloodlines. When her little sister Tuesday (Savannah Lee Nassif) is attacked by a familiar masked maniac, Sara and her definitely-not-the-killer boyfriend Jack (Cameron Scott Roberts) turn to Cindy for help, who in turn reunites her old group of friends when she realizes Ghostface is making a reboot-sequel hybrid.
Scary Movie’s insistence on dragging the entirety of the original cast into 2026 leaves some characters feeling like arbitrary inclusions. Gail Hailstorm (Cheri Oteri) and Sheriff Doofy (Dave Sheridan) are particularly dead weight. They are characters that, yes, were key players in the fifth Scream, but the deeply unfunny writing and performances offer nothing in terms of comedic substance.
Characters that fall into similarly familiar, predictable comedic territory are Tuesday’s crop of high school friends (all corresponding to the new young Scream cast). Strangely, there’s no mention is made of Mikey Madison’s Amber, with the film instead opting to riff on Sonia Ammar’s (forgettable) Liv via Ruby Snowber’s Elle, as a bizarrely one-note nymphomaniac whose role culminates (pun intended) in a cartoonishly raunchy and overlong sex scene.
Dylan Minnette’s Wes is a similarly strange, arguably unmemorable character to riff, but he nonetheless serves as one of three characters the film uses to make fun of identity politics and the LGBTQ+ community. Played by nonbinary actor Benny Zielke, Wes is reimagined as a trans teen named Jess whose dad continually misgenders him in attempts to be a supportive parent. It’s lazy, unspecific, and doesn’t have anything to do with the film it’s parodying. It is just the kind of tired, anti-woke humor that’s become seemingly part and parcel for comics over a certain age.
The same writing habits also rear their ugly head (though, admittedly, in a manner motivated by the source material) with the Mindy Meeks-Martin parody character (played here by Sydney Park but originally portrayed by nonbinary actor Jasmin Savoy Brown), “Dei,” who angrily corrects an onlooker about their pronouns mid-stabbing. The pronoun jokes are repetitive, tiresome, and dead on arrival, but thankfully, these are minor characters who are killed almost as quickly as they’re introduced.
Instead, we follow the “core four” from the original Scary Movie. Brenda (now rocking a Ma-inspired bowl cut and mother to the Meeks twins) is mostly sidelined, but played with boundless charm by a pitch-perfect Regina Hall, who (alongside Anna Faris) continues to be the franchise’s saving comic grace. Shawn Wayans’ Gay Ray is also back, blending the worst of the script’s lazy comedic writing with the Elle, Dei, and Jess characters to create a predictably predatory and bizarrely outdated trope. More than any other character in the franchise, Gay Ray feels *most* like an unnecessary remnant of a bygone era whose narrative and comedic contributions don’t justify his continued presence in the franchise.
On the other side of the coin, though, stoners are perpetually green subject matter. Marlon Wayans’ Shorty Meeks slots remarkably well into the hyper-online, perpetually smoke-filled, highly-reactive world of Twitch live streaming. The character may have been introduced 26 years ago, but there’s nothing desperate or “how do you do, fellow kids” about seeing him on a stream with Kai Cenat or fantasizing about a foursome with the K-Pop Demon Hunters.
It’s in those moments of bizarre hyperspecificity—an animated musical parody blending two of the 2020’s most beloved kids films, Gail taking The Substance and giving birth to one of the White Chicks, Cindy getting a full-fledged John Wick fight sequence against a Matrix-esque army of Ghostfaces—where the Wayans’ writing is the strongest. No matter the genre, no matter the release date, no film is safe from a one-liner or a fourth-wall break. There’s somehow a Project Hail Mary sight gag, despite the films being released just months apart.
Perhaps more than any other franchise entry, Scary Movie feels like as much of a sendup of Hollywood as it is horror. The opening sequence parodies the Scream VI opener with Samara Weaving, yes, but it’s mostly an Oscars-centric One Battle After Another gag, opting for industry commentary out of the gate. This trend continues into the third act killer reveal, which acknowledges the real-life ousting of the Wayans family from the franchise in favor of Anthony Anderson, who serves as the twist villain in a stroke of meta, self-deprecating humor.
Scary Movie ends with the original stars killing off the younger generation for fear of being usurped. It is a satisfactory, appropriately self-aware ending, but one that begins to feel decidedly pointed when considered in conjunction with the film’s vitriol towards its young queer characters and staunch insistence on shoehorning in Gay Ray.
Undeniably, though, this is a crowd-pleasing comedy that moves at a breakneck pace, delivering on its promise of parodying the latest decade of horror films with the Scary Movie franchise’s signature blend of crude humor, meta commentary, and (for better or worse) all of the Wayans Brothers’ stylistic quirks back in full force. It may be overlong, bizarrely fumbling through what should’ve been slam dunk parodies like Sinners and M3GAN, but when Scary Movie is funny, it’s really funny, and the return of the original cast and creatives ensures a welcome return to form for a crowd-pleasing franchise.