Scary Movie (2026) review: Horror spoof returns to its roots
Members of the Wayans family created the Scary Movie horror spoof franchise way back in 2000 and swiftly followed it up with 2001’s Scary Movie 2. Following a pay dispute with the studio, the series was taken away from them and the ensuing three chapters – all varying degrees of terrible – were released without their involvement. With the franchise back in their hands, has it been restored to its former glory? Read on to find out.
Scary Movie is self-described as a “rebootquel”, a film that reboots the original franchise by bringing in new characters but keeps a few legacy characters around for continuity. Our legacy characters are, of course, the Core Four: Cindy (Anna Faris), Brenda (Regina Hall), her brother Shorty (Marlon Wayans) and her husband Ray (Shawn Wayans). Cindy (a parody of Scream’s Sidney Prescott) is now a recluse like 2018’s Halloween-era Laurie Strode, with a gun-filled, booby-trapped home ready for Ghostface’s return. Brenda now looks like Octavia Spencer in Ma, Shorty is still a stoner in high school, and Ray is still trying hard to keep his gay tendencies under wraps.
While the latter four instalments covered different films, this new Scary Movie (annoyingly not titled Scary Movie 6, same as Scream 5 was just called Scream) takes the franchise way back to the beginning and revolves around Scream again, with the Ghostface killer going on a murder spree in Woodsville (aka Woodsboro). It helps that they have recent material to draw from – 2022’s Scream and 2023’s Scream VI. In a nod to those films, Cindy has two daughters, Tuesday (Savannah Lee Nassif) and Sara (Olivia Rose Keegan), who are parodies of Scream’s Tara (played by Wednesday star Jenna Ortega) and Sam (Melissa Barrera). In addition, Brenda has two children who are clearly stand-ins for the Meeks-Martin twins.
While the Scream parody may be the backbone of the story, Scary Movie pokes fun at or references many different horror films, including Sinners, Weapons, Smile, M3GAN, Get Out and The Substance, plus non-horror films like Michael and John Wick (I won’t spoil any more). As expected, it is basically sketches stitched together very thinly to form the semblance of a narrative. But that’s Scary Movie for you! The more you know about the films they’re parodying, the better your experience will be. There are so many nods that you’ll have to see it more than once to spot them all.
Does every single joke work? No, of course not. The gay Ray jokes can especially get in the bin. They should have stayed in the 2000s. But overall, I found this to be hilarious and witty, with some risky political statements relating to ICE, police brutality and Jeffrey Epstein. Sure, some scenes feel shoehorned in and don’t make a ton of sense within the wider story, but that’s to be expected with Scary Movie, which is all about laughs over plot and character depth. The opening kill is the best the franchise has ever had (what a cameo!), the nod to another Wayans classic is brilliant, and a surprise musical number made me laugh so hard I had tears.
As a major fan of the original, I was delighted to see the Core Four back together after 25 years. This is the hardest and most consistently I’ve laughed at a film this year. I had such a great time!
In cinemas from Friday 5th June