“Scary Movie” is a movie built on the premise that you can take any horror film and remake it as a joke. That premise is simple, and it is also the entire movie. Directed by Keenen Ivory Wayans, the film takes aim at “Scream,” “The Blair Witch Project,” “Stigmata,” “The Sixth Sense,” “Titanic,” “The Matrix,” “Cruel Intentions,” “The Parent Trap,” “Deep Impact,” “The Red Violin,” and “The X-Files.” It wants to make you laugh at every one of them. It mostly succeeds, but only in the way a sledgehammer succeeds at destroying things.
Trailer, via YouTube Movies.
The Scream Parody
The film opens with a parody of “Scream.” A teenager named Cindy Campbell, played by Keri Russell, gets a phone call from a killer who knows her friends’ names and their worst fears. The joke is that the killer is a nerdy kid with glasses, and he quotes lines from the original film back at the characters. This is the clearest example of what the movie does well: it takes a specific line or scene and replaces it with something absurd, often involving sex or violence that has nothing to do with the original.
The problem is that the parody runs on borrowed energy. “Scream” works because it is smart about horror tropes. “Scary Movie” is not smart. It is loud, repetitive, and it treats the original films as objects to be mocked rather than texts to be understood. The jokes are delivered with the confidence of a man who believes the audience is too stupid to notice he is repeating himself.
The Blair Witch Parody
The parody of “The Blair Witch Project” is built around a group of college students who find themselves lost in the woods after a camping trip goes wrong. They record their terror on video cameras, and the footage is presented as evidence of a supernatural force. In “Scary Movie,” the students are not being hunted by a witch. They are being hunted by a bear, and the bear is played by a man in a costume who looks like he is having fun.
This is the film’s most committed stretch. The humor comes from the contrast between the serious tone of the original and the ridiculous sight of a man in a bear suit running through the forest. It is funny, but it is also thin. The joke is repeated several times, and each repeat feels less clever than the last.
The Titanic Parody
The film’s treatment of “Titanic” is the most famous aspect of its reputation. Leonardo DiCaprio’s character, Jack, is turned into a coward who refuses to fight for his life. He is constantly asking, “Is this seat taken?” and “Where’s the bathroom?” while the ship sinks around him. Kate Winslet’s character, Rose, is reduced to a screaming wreck who cannot swim and cannot understand why the boat is sinking.
The parody is meant to be a commentary on the romanticization of tragedy. Instead, it becomes a commentary on the film’s own inability to engage with anything except its target. The joke is that the characters are idiots, and the film seems to agree with that assessment. There is no attempt to make the parody smart or pointed. It is simply a series of gags about a sinking ship and two people who cannot save themselves.
The Running Gag
The film’s most persistent joke is the running gag involving Cindy Campbell’s mother, played by Carmen Electra. Her mother is a slut, and she is constantly trying to seduce men in front of her daughter. The joke is that the mother is not ashamed of her behavior, and the daughter is not shocked by it. The film presents this as a realistic family dynamic, and it is not.
This is where the film’s politics become visible. The joke is that women are promiscuous and that their daughters are used to seeing them act that way. It is a crude joke, and it is repeated throughout the film. It is also the kind of joke that has aged poorly, which is saying something for a movie this young.
The Final Score
“Scary Movie” is not a terrible film. It is a bad film that occasionally hits its mark. The parodies of “The Blair Witch Project” and “Scream” have moments of genuine wit, and the performances by the cast are energetic enough to carry the film through its weaker stretches. But the film is built on a foundation of repetition and cruelty, and that foundation shows through everything it touches.
The movie is mean-spirited, and it is lazy. It is a film that thinks it is smarter than its targets, but it is not. It is a film that thinks it is funnier than its jokes, but it is not. It is a film that thinks it is doing something new, but it is not.
“The joke is that the characters are idiots, and the film seems to agree with that assessment.”
That is the central problem of “Scary Movie.” It is a film that believes its own cruelty is comedy, and it is a film that believes its own repetition is wit. It is not either of those things. It is a film that is best forgotten, except as a reminder of what happens when satire stops being satire and becomes just noise.
“Scary Movie” scores 5.2 out of 10.
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