Year of Release: 2000
Director: Keenen Ivory Wayans
Starring: Anna Faris, Regina Hall, Shannon Elizabeth, Lochlyn Munro, Marlon Wayans, Shawn Wayans, Jon Abrahams, Carmen Electra, Dave Sheridan, Rick Ducommun, Cheri Oteri, Kelly Coffield, Kurt Fuller
Score out of ten (whole numbers only): 4
Watch it on Amazon
Synopsis and Review
By the time "Scary Movie" premiered, the spoof genre was quite dormant. What David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and Jerry Zucker originally did with "Airplane", "Top Secret", and "The Naked Gun" went beyond the typical spoofing of the films that inspired them, they deconstructed the original and put it through their lens that brought out the humor and ridiculousness of the tropes that propelled the original. "Scary Movie" goes in a slightly different direction, inspired by the ZAP troupe, but also Mel Brooks' own spoofs. The film follows the story of high school senior Cindy Campbell. She and her best friends, Brenda and Buffy, alongside their respective boyfriends, Bobby, Ray, and Greg, jointly participated in a cover up of a man they accidentally killed just a year earlier. They all start receiving messages from someone who knows what they did and is menacing them. This unknown individual starts a killing spree of the group of friends, starting with Buffy, followed by Greg, all the while venturing closer and closer to Cindy. Cindy who recently went through a traumatic event in her life, the killing of her mother, suspects someone close to her may actually be the killer. And the hints all point in Bobby's direction who keeps denying any wrong doing. As the killings continue, the more desperate Cindy becomes.
The most obvious target of "Scary Movie" is of course Wes Craven's "Scream" film(s), which is used as the baseline for the core narrative, with many other films layering alongside this one for the spoofing. "I Know What You Did Last Summer", "The Blair Witch Project", "The Sixth Sense", "The Matrix", all get similar treatment, with varying degrees of success. While the premise of "I Know What You Did Last Summer" is an easy target to parody, the same going for "The Blair Witch Project", M. Night Shyamalan's film is not so easy to replicate (though "Signs" does becomes an easy target on "Scary Movie 3"). The level of success of the spoofing becomes more effective as the silliness of the tropes of the original film are on display. The biggest issue with this film, it's not its lack of polish, something that the ZAZ team always primed upon, but its actual intelligence and humor level. Now some may argue one doesn't see a spoof film for its sophistication, but I will disagree with that statement: "Airplane", while not a spoof film per se, was able to intelligently mock the clichés that it observed from all the disaster film series of the 1970s, and did it all with a wink and with a consistent tone that was (and still is) capable to cater to different types of humor. "Scary Movie" does have its good moments, most of them involving Anna Faris or Regina Hall, but other than that it devolves into this quasi-amateurish college level of humor that eventually lowers its success (which is far more visible in "Scary Movie 2"). The cast is game for the nonsense that is happening, but the highlight is Anna Faris, then barely starting her career, who goes along for the ride and reveals a fantastic comic timing in every single frame (she is possibly one of the most underrated and most talented comic performers working these days), with great support from the versatile Regina Hall, who was then also relatively fresh in her career, and has since then become a powerhouse. The production team is competent. With a new sequel about to come out in 2026, it's interesting to witness the high points of this franchise, namely David Zucker's "Scary Movie 3", and its lowest, namely Malcom D. Lee's "Scary Movie 5". This one, that started it all, is worth watching, if anything for Anna Faris and Regina Hall, two wonderful performers commencing their careers.
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