The Wayans Brothers are back for a disappointing Scary Movie 'rebootiqule' that doesn't cross any lines whatsoever.
The promise for the return of Scary Movie was that ‘Every line will be crossed’. With the Wayans Brothers involved for the first time in a quarter of a century, and comedy seemingly dulled by a supposed fear of causing offence in the 13 years since Scary Movie 5, the boast at least seemed deliverable. Couple that with a tonne of new horror to spoof, and you have the conditions for some of the most outrageous, offensive and hilarious dumb fun of the year.
In the event, it doesn’t go anywhere near far enough to back up that tagline. It’s mostly the same tired old jokes about weed, copying bits from recent horror movies rather than spoofing them properly, and referencing how much money everyone made out of it, or how the Wayans weren’t in the last few movies while other cast members were. Even by Scary Movie standards, it is abysmally lazy.
The plot is basically that of the never-ending Scream franchise: someone gets attacked by Ghostface (in this case Tuesday Campbell), and her older sister Sara and boyfriend Jack reckon it’s a repeat of what’s happened before. This leads them to find their mother, Cindy, who’s holed up in a fortified house a la the last Final Destination flick, who thinks the whole thing is a setup to by Ghostface to trap her. There’s an eventual reunion of old characters and new, they decide they’re in a ‘rebootquel’, loads of people die, loads of bongs get ripped, and very few laughs are had.
The main problem is that it’s geared up to have you laughing in spite of yourself, at things you wish weren’t making you laugh, and for the most part it just doesn’t. The only time this does happen is in the gags about racial issues (and an embarrassed Ghostface pulling out a series of increasingly problematic weapons is actually very funny), because it’s the only time the jokes are relevant, or properly jabbing at you, or that you feel anyone behind it cared about what they were doing, rather than just laughing at how much money they're making from the whole thing.
The other problem for a spoof is that most of the spoofing isn’t spoofing at all. It’s referencing, copying. It’s just Saying The Thing From The Other Film without actually knowing why it should work in the first place. The bit where they ‘do’ Get Out sort of lands because the joke’s a good one, and the Terrifier skit contains one of the few actual laugh-out-loud moments, but mostly it’s just recreating bits (from Scream, The Substance, M3GAN, Final Destination) and then yelling something instead of writing a punchline.
There is no illusion that anyone was making Citizen Kane here (and they joke about that often enough). But this isn’t a get-out-of-jail-free card, either. Having promised to slash through the frontiers of what you can laugh at, all we have here is a dull, blunt, unthreatening disappointment.
Verdict: 2/5
Scary Movie is out now.
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