Breaking down all the parodies and references in 2026’s Scary Movie
The team behind the original Scary Movie and Scary Movie 2 are back for the sixth instalment – annoyingly called Scary Movie – and in typical meta fashion, it parodies horrors while also referencing itself.
As someone who has watched Scary Movie countless times, it felt like my duty to note down all the inside jokes, references and parodies. Here’s everything I noticed watching the new movie (SPOILERS AHEAD):
The horror parodies
Scream & Scream VI (but mostly Scream)
The Wayans family have brought the franchise back to its roots and made it a Scream parody again. And there’s plenty of new material to draw from thanks to 2022’s Scream and 2023’s Scream VI. There are so many references to Scream, so brace yourself:
Calling the film Scary Movie instead of Scary Movie 6 pokes fun at Scream 5 being called Scream (just like the I Know What You Did Last Summer reboot).
It is set in a town called Woodsville, a piss-take of Woodsboro.
Anna Faris is back as Cindy Campbell (a riff on Sidney Prescott, although she’s also a send-up of Jamie Lee Curtis’s Laurie Strode in 2018’s Halloween and a parody of John Wick).
The new leads are Tuesday – a pisstake of Jenna Ortega, who plays Wednesday Addams in Netflix’s Wednesday – and Sara, who is a stand-in for Melissa Barrera‘s Sam. She has mommy issues instead of daddy issues in this version.
There are two opening kills that replicate the opening scenes in both Scream 5 & 6. In one of the best and most unexpected cameos, Teyana Taylor takes the place of Samara Weaving, talking to her date on the phone before leaving a restaurant and going up a creepy alley. But Ghostface doesn’t kill her – his knife cannot penetrate her rock-hard abs, and she calls her street posse to beat him up. Ghostface teases her for not winning an Oscar (for One Battle After Another), and she hits him with her Golden Globe. Spectacular!! This goes into the opening kill with Tuesday, taking the piss out of Ortega’s “elevated horror” line before she’s stabbed at the front door.
Sara’s boyfriend Jack (a send-up of Richie, played by Jack Quaid in Scream) is singled out as the prime Ghostface suspect for the entire movie, sending up the fact that it’s basically always the love interest. Which is very true.
Doofy (Dave Sheridan) is back, once again playing a substitute for David Arquette’s Dewey Riley, who is retired and reclusive in his mobile home. He comes out of retirement to help Sara and catch Ghostface – and like Dewey, he gets stabbed by the killer in the hospital.
Gail Hailstorm (Cheri Oteri), a parody of Courteney Cox‘s Gale Weathers, returns to report on the latest killings. Sara makes jokes about the Friends star during their conversation.
Brenda (Regina Hall) has two children, Dei and Brad, who are clearly supposed to be Mindy and Chad (Jasmin Savoy Brown and Mason Gooding). Dei leads the meta scene speculating about who the killer could be, like in the recent Screams.
In a spoof of the Scream VI scene, Dei rides the NYC subway on Halloween and is surrounded by people wearing horror masks – Chucky, Jason Vorhees from Friday the 13th, Billy the Puppet from Saw, Heart Eyes, etc. But Ghostface appears in disguise as M3GAN and, after doing a dance, stabs Dei. She is then also stabbed by a passenger named Karen, who takes issue with Dei’s they/them pronouns. It feels very reminiscent of Brenda’s cinema death in the OG Scary Movie.
The film-within-a-film franchise is called Horror Movie. In Scream, it’s called Stab.
The finale takes place in a replica of the Stu Macher house, a key location for the entire franchise.
They make a quip about Neve Campbell not playing Sidney Prescott in Scream VI.
Ruby Snowber plays Val, a composite of Liv, Chad’s girlfriend, and Ghostface killer Amber in Scream 5. She goes full Amber in the finale, pulling out a gun and saying the iconic line, “Welcome to act three.” They then take the piss, questioning what that means.
There are six Ghostfaces – Jack and Val (like in 2022’s Scream), Anthony Anderson and Shaquille O’Neal as themselves and Ray (Shawn Wayans) and Shorty (Marlon Wayans). The latter four will be explained in more detail in the Scary Movie reference section.
The Scary Movie team really go after the reboot/sequels in this one, so of course, the Halloween revival gets a parody. Cindy is dressed as Jamie Lee Curtis‘ legacy character and Michael Myers survivor Laurie Strode in 2018’s Halloween and she has a house kitted out with guns and booby traps, ready for Ghostface’s return. She mysteriously drops this persona halfway through and spoofs John Wick instead.
John Wick
Not a horror, but Scary Movie loves to give Cindy her action moment, like the earlier parodies of The Matrix and Charlie’s Angels. She turns up to the house party in an all-black outfit and takes out loads of Ghostfaces with a gun – and also dildos! She also discusses the themes of the film during a fight with one masked killer, and in a meta moment, Faris stands to the side, eating popcorn while her stunt double kicks ass. Brenda also quips that she can’t call Cindy Ballerina because “nobody saw” that female-fronted John Wick spin-off. Burn!
I Know What You Did Last Summer
There is only a brief section, thanks to the return of Scary Movie’s Lochlyn Munro. He plays Greg Phillippe (a parody of Ryan Phillippe’s character in the slasher), but he is now a cop with a trans child. Like the original, Greg is being terrorised about the size of his penis, and as fate would have it, it gets chopped off by Ghostface.
We are introduced to Sara and Jack when they leave their jobs at the Final Destination theme park to return to Woodsville after Tuesday’s stabbing. While they are talking in the car park, people come off a roller coaster (like Final Destination 3), and a big Ferris wheel comes off its axis. In a reference to the most recent outing, Bloodlines, a boy leaves the park, thanking his lucky penny for saving him, but the roller coaster cars fall on him.
Cindy’s original boyfriend – and OG Ghostface killer Bobby (Jon Abrahams) – returns for a brief scene where she bumps into him on the psych ward of a hospital, and he’s doing the creepy Smile face.
Get Out
Shorty replicates the initial sunken place scene from Jordan Peele‘s 2017 horror hit. Like the original, Shorty – in place of Daniel Kaluuya‘s Chris – becomes hypnotised by a psychiatrist stirring a spoon in a teacup. But Catherine Keener‘s psychiatrist is replaced by Ghostface and Shorty ends up fully sinking into the armchair, before falling into a black void. This leads to the best reference in the whole movie…
KPop Demon Hunters
After falling through the void, Shorty wakes up in an animated world and sings a parody of KPop Demon Hunters’ Oscar-winning song Golden, complete with lyrics about drugs and sex. I had tears in my eyes!
Chris Elliott returns as Hanson (‘take my strong hand’) from Scary Movie 2. This time, his name is Hanson Shorthand, and he’s dressed like Nicolas Cage as the serial killer Longlegs. The FBI – played by Heidi Gardner and Damon Wayans Jr. as parodies of Maika Monroe and Blair Underwood‘s characters – arrive at a bus stop to arrest him, but their officers jump on and beat up a random Black man instead. Later, during the credits, they replicate the interrogation scene between Longlegs and Monroe’s Lee and he puts his strong hand in a cake and repeatedly bashes his head against a table.
Ma
Brenda is dressed exactly like Octavia Spencer in the 2019 movie Ma for much of this film. Yep, even with that bob! She also throws parties for her teenage children and supplies them with jelly shots.
In a last-minute addition to the recent horror smash Weapons, children are accidentally given drugs while trick-or-treating on Halloween and run around the streets high at 2:17am. One says 6-7 (a thing I still don’t understand), and one gets hit by a car!
The Substance
Gail Hailstorm decides to get ‘The Stuff’ to make herself look younger. But Ghostface enters the white tiled room and kills her doctors, before giving her lip filler and then pumping her full of a Substance-like fluid. As in Coralie Fargeat‘s horror, starring Demi Moore, Gail falls to the ground and her back opens up. Before we can see her new self, the unsealed Epstein Files appear on the floor. After that, her new self walks to the mirror and wipes off the steam… revealing it to be Marlon Wayans as Tiffany in White Chicks!! HILARIOUS. They also reference Moore failing to win the Oscar, claiming that nobody will ever win for horror.
The film mimics the opening scene, where Miles Caton goes to a church. In this instance, it’s Ray going to church and announcing that he is no longer gay (yes, the tiresome gay jokes sadly continue), but from his speech, it’s very clear that he still is. In a later sequence, Sara, Tuesday and Jack arrive at the Meeks’ house party in period clothes, holding musical instruments. They ask to be invited in, but Shorty, Brenda and Ray say no. They perform a song, but that still doesn’t work.
In another last-minute addition, the team parodies the recently released Michael Jackson biopic by showing Tuesday watching the trailer. In the fake trailer, Kenan Thompson plays who you think is the late King of Pop, however, the movie’s title is revealed to be “Jermaine”.
Terrifier 3
In a flashback showing Cindy’s bad parenting of Sara, they go to the mall to meet Santa, but it’s actually Art the Clown. A young Sara is given a present – a severed arm – while the other kids are given body parts too, including testicles! One little girl is not impressed.
Considering it went viral, Scary Movie had to include the M3GAN dance. The creepy, lethal doll does her routine down a subway carriage on Halloween and then reveals she is actually Ghostface in disguise.
In a very brief scene, Shorty says “Candyman” in the mirror repeatedly to summon his drug dealer.
In a mid-credits sequence, the team present a trailer for “Brosferatu”, depicting a scene where the vampire Nosferatu (played by Marlon Wayans) visits Ellen in her bedroom, like in Robert Eggers‘ 2024 Gothic horror. According to the credits, his character is called Count Brolock instead of Orlok.
Other films mentioned by name include: 12 Years A Slave, It Follows, The Silence of the Lambs, Saltburn, The Hangover, Brokeback Mountain and Kazaam, while Jack also tries to recreate the high-pitched wail from Defying Gravity in Wicked.
Scary Movie franchise references
Carmen Electra, who starred in the opening kill in Scary Movie and made another appearance as a completely different character in Scary Movie 4, makes a cameo as the bartender serving Teyana Taylor in the opening kill.
As mentioned before, many supporting cast members from Scary Movie and Scary Movie 2 are back, including Chris Elliott as Hanson (although he looks like Longlegs), Lochlyn Munro as Greg Phillippe (but he’s a cop now), Jon Abrahams as Bobby (in a short Smile moment), Dave Sheridan as Special Officer Doofy and Cheri Oteri as Gail Hailstorm.
More surprisingly, Anthony Anderson returns to the fold after appearing in Scary 3 & 4. That’s unexpected because those instalments weren’t made by the Wayans – the franchise was taken from them after Scary Movie 2. Rather than playing his original character Mahalik Phifer (a parody of 8 Mile’s Mekhi Phifer), Anderson plays himself. He is revealed to be a Ghostface alongside…
Shaquille O’Neal, who played himself in the Saw spoof opening kill in Scary Movie 4. Before he takes off the Ghostface mask, the team guess it’s Kevin Hart, as he starred alongside Anderson in 3 & 4, but it’s Shaq instead.
Those two are fake-out Ghostfaces just for the shock value of their cameo. But then two more Ghostfaces show up and it’s Marlon and Shawn Wayans, who are basically themselves instead of Shorty and Ray in that moment. They stab Anderson and Shaq for doing 3 & 4, and Anderson insists he didn’t know the studio “fired the family” when he accepted the role. The Wayans brothers then confront Faris and Hall for being in 3 & 4, and they basically say they needed the money so they are forgiven. They decide to kill the new cast members (even their children!) so the legacy characters can reign supreme in future instalments.
The ‘Ray being gay but pretending he’s not’ continues, more than 25 years later. Shorty is still a stoner, but he has bitcoin money now.
Shorty once again has fun with Ghostface. In the original, they got high together and did a freestyle rap. This time, Ghostface joins his livestream and participates in a Jackass-style stunt with Kai Cenat before killing the streaming personality. In a later scene, they get high and play video games.
Doofy reunites with Gail. Gail performed sexual favours for Doofy in order to get information about the murders in the first film. In a nod to that this time around, she once again sucks his finger and recoils at the nasty taste. They repeat lines like “I went poopy” and “Gail swallows”, but she insists that this time she will only do a handjob.
Dei Meeks getting stabbed by different people in a subway carriage reminded me of her mum Brenda getting stabbed by multiple cinemagoers in the first film.
Cindy does the classic “what are you waiting for?” while spinning around and yelling at the sky.
The Polaroid of Greg’s small penis and the words “I KNOW” make a comeback.
Shorty still does his distinct laugh and says, “Shit, son!” This brought me so much nostalgic joy.
Miscellaneous references
An ICE raid goes down in the garden of one of the teens before they die.
The unredacted Epstein Files come out of the back of Gail during The Substance spoof.
Brenda talks about the rap feud between Drake and Kendrick Lamar.
A gravestone bears the name of rapper Tekashi69, who is considered a snitch after testifying against a gang a couple of years back.
Ray plugs his electric car into a charging dock called “Woke Watts”.
Dei Meeks holds a placard protesting the banning of books “except for Harry Potter”.
Gail presents a show on the “Fake News Channel”, which has a similar logo to Fox News.
*****
If I missed any, please let me know!