Scary Movie (2026)

Scary Movie (2026)

Every line will be crossed.

There’s something oddly fitting about Scary Movie returning as a legacy sequel pretending it’s not a legacy sequel. After years away from the franchise, the Wayans are back, Anna Faris and Regina Hall are back, Marlon and Shawn are back, and Ghostface-adjacent silliness is back. The whole thing arrives with the subtlety of someone smashing through a window, slipping on blood, crashing into a drawer full of sex toys, and still pausing for a fart joke. In other words, yes, this is absolutely a Scary Movie film.

The plot, to use the word generously, mostly takes its cues from Scream (2022) and Scream VI, riffing on the modern “requel” formula. Old survivors are dragged back into another round of bloodletting. A younger cast is introduced to inherit the franchise. A familiar killer returns. Everyone keeps explaining the rules of legacy sequels, soft reboots and quasi-remakes while the movie becomes exactly the thing it’s mocking. It’s a smart enough angle, and if any franchise was going to parody overdue sequels pretending to be both a fresh chapter and a greatest-hits remake, it was always going to be this one.

The problem is that Scary Movie does not build a story around that idea so much as staple sketches together and hope the audience does not notice the joins. At times, it feels less like a movie and more like an SNL episode with a theatrical budget, where every few minutes another parody segment bursts through the wall, does its bit, and runs away before anyone can ask how it connects. Some gags even turn up during the credits, and not in a clever “one last laugh” way. More in a “we filmed this and had no clue where to put it” way.

That looseness is both the film’s biggest strength and biggest weakness. Director Michael Tiddes keeps everything moving at a frantic clip, which helps when the jokes land and makes the dead spots obvious when they do not. There’s plenty of energy, but not always the discipline to shape it into a proper comic rhythm. On the writing side, Marlon Wayans, Shawn Wayans and Keenen Ivory Wayans — alongside Craig Wayans and Rick Alvarez — give the movie a clear link to the original’s reckless comic DNA: crude, fearless, proudly stupid and willing to charge at the joke everyone else is avoiding. The downside is that the script sometimes feels like a whiteboard session where nobody was allowed to erase anything. Some ideas are inspired. Some are lazy. Some are so dumb they loop back around to funny. And some just sit there, sweating.

That is where the new film differs most from the original. The first Scary Movie was crude, chaotic and proudly immature, but it also had a surprisingly sturdy comic structure. Part of the charm was watching how all those horror references were smashed together into something that still resembled a plot. This one has the same reckless spirit, but not the same control. It rarely builds momentum the way the original did. Instead, it fires off bits, references and gross-out detours until something hits. To be fair, some of those hits are very funny.

The best thing about the movie is the sheer amount of material the filmmakers now have to play with. It has been 13 years since Scary Movie 5, which means horror has gone through several lifetimes of trends, prestige trauma metaphors, streaming nightmares and viral panic cycles. The spoofing of modern horror gives the movie its biggest kick, especially when it takes very serious, very stylish imagery and punts it straight into the gutter. It has a good time with M3GAN, Get Out and Terrifier, while one of the cleverer riffs on The Substance doubles as a cheeky nod to the Wayans’ own White Chicks legacy.

Some of the sharper material is not even horror-specific. The film gets mileage out of COVID, #MeToo, OnlyFans, ICE, live streamers and online outrage culture, and it’s clearly trying to push buttons. The marketing promises that “every line will be crossed,” and Scary Movie wastes no time proving it means business. Whether that feels refreshing or exhausting will depend on your tolerance for jokes sprinting into the danger zone waving sparklers. Some of the outrage will be earned. Some of it will probably be exactly what the creative team wanted.

There’s also a weed-induced, fully animated reference to KPop Demon Hunters that has no right to work as well as it does, and a Michael gag that feels like it was dropped in at the last possible second because someone on set said, “Hey, the Michael biopic just killed it at the box office, let’s try to capitalize on that.” Shameless? Absolutely. But they were right. The laugh lands.

Unfortunately, for every good gag, there are about five duds. That has always been part of the Scary Movie bargain, but this entry really pushes that patience. The gross-out humor is relentless, and not always inspired. Too often, the punchline is simply, “That’s gross.” At first, you laugh. By the fifth time, you just want someone to move the sticky dildo off the carpet.

Still, the returning cast gives the film a huge lift. Anna Faris remains one of the great secret weapons of this franchise, because her Cindy Campbell plays stupidity with total emotional sincerity. Regina Hall is just as valuable as Brenda, bringing that perfect mix of volume, attitude and survival instinct. Seeing Faris and Hall together again gives this joint its biggest nostalgia hit, and their chemistry makes you wish the movie trusted them with more of the center.

Marlon Wayans is also a blast returning as Shorty Meeks, still operating on a wavelength that appears to be eighty percent weed smoke and twenty percent survival panic. Shawn Wayans returns as Ray Wilkins, and while not every joke around him feels fresh, the old-school Wayans rhythm is unmistakable. The returning favorites around them add to that scrappy reunion energy, with Dave Sheridan’s Doofy Gilmore and Cheri Oteri’s Gail Hailstorm among the callbacks designed to make longtime fans grin. Some cameos are sharper than others, but the goodwill they generate is hard to deny.

The younger cast does what it can inside a film that is far more interested in using them as requel chess pieces than fully developing them. Olivia Rose Keegan is good as Sara Campbell, Cindy’s daughter, carrying enough of her mother’s chaotic innocence to feel like a natural extension of the character without simply copying Faris. Savannah Lee Nassif also leaves an impression as Tuesday, Sara’s younger sister, fitting neatly into the new-generation slasher framework. They’re not the main attraction, but they help sell the joke that the franchise is trying to refresh itself while the old cast keeps yanking it back for one more pratfall.

What stuck out most for me, though, was the ending. Without getting too specific, it’s dark, random, wildly stupid — and somehow, it won me over. The film seems to accept that Scary Movie is never going to grow up. It knows these movies are immature, messy, offensive and allergic to restraint. But instead of apologizing for that, it turns the whole thing into the punchline. While other requels polish the brand and pretend the franchise has evolved, Scary Movie snatches the torch back, sets something inappropriate on fire with it, and tells the original fans they are exactly where they belong. The old guard are still here, and they have no intention of giving up the spotlight. It’s not asking fans to grow up, because the franchise clearly has no plans to do that either. Whether that’s charming or a threat probably depends on your tolerance for this kind of comedy. Possibly both.

As a comeback, Scary Movie is not a home run. It’s too sloppy, too padded, too dependent on gross-out gags and far too happy to mistake loudness for comedy. But as a middle-tier entry in the franchise, it is more entertaining than expected. The Wayans involvement matters. Faris and Hall matter. The film has enough decent laughs to keep it from feeling like a corpse being dragged around for brand recognition.

It’s nowhere near as sharp or surprisingly well-constructed as the original, but it might be the funniest entry since then, mostly because it understands what this series is supposed to be: dumb, rude, fast, offensive, proudly tasteless and occasionally inspired. For every handful of jokes that die horribly, one rises from the grave and bites you. And for Scary Movie, that probably counts as a win.

2 / 5 – Average

Reviewed by Stu Cachia (S-Littner)

Scary Movie is distributed by Paramount Pictures Australia