Scary Movie Review: Anna Faris & Regina Hall Bring Laughs to Reboot

The gang’s all back together. It’s time to say “WAZZUP?!” to a brand new Scary Movie, and this film sees the return of the Wayans Brothers to the parody franchise. After creative differences led to the Wayans departing the series after Scary Movie 2 in 2001, we’ve had three new installments in 25 years of varying qualities. This film sees the return of all our familiar faces, from Anna Faris as Cindy Campbell to Regina Hall as Brenda Meeks. It feels like a long-awaited high school reunion, but does the movie work as a long-awaited legacy sequel/reboot, or does it fall flat on its Ghostface?

For the most part, Scary Movie works well, but you need to go in knowing what you’ve signed up for. When you’re going into a Wayans movie, you can’t expect high-brow, sophisticated humor. You’re going to get dumb, undignified jokes, and some of them will be pretty funny, and some of them won’t be. You’re not watching a future comedy classic — you’re watching a movie from the director of the A Haunted House movies, Fifty Shades of Black, Naked, and Sextuplets. None of these are all-time great comedy films by a long shot, but they have their audience, and if you like those movies or any of the previous Scary Movies, you’ll probably enjoy the new one.

There’s a lot to enjoy about this film. The way that Scary Movie (2000) was a send-up of Scream (1996), Scary Movie (2026) is now parodying Scream (2022). In many ways, it honors that film’s “legacy sequel” rules by bringing back the OG fan favorites while showing off a new generation of characters. Speaking of the OGs, it’s amazing to see Faris and Hall back as Cindy and Brenda. These two have always been such fun characters, and the movie makes full use of them.

With the return of the Wayans, we get the return of Marlon Wayans as fan-favorite stoner Shorty Meeks. It’s been far too long since we’ve gotten to see this high-as-a-kite character on the big screen, and Wayans picks up that joint like not a day has passed. It’s always been funny to see how enthusiastically he jumps back into his character’s exaggerated facial expressions, even during press interviews for last year’s movie Him. Also returning after a long hiatus from acting is Shawn Wayans as the definitely-not-gay Ray Wilkins. He’s back like he never left—another hilarious performance.

But we also have some new additions. Most of the new Scary Movie characters have their moments to shine, but they’re all quite heavily based on the main cast from Scream (2022). Though they have a few funny moments, they never overshadow our legacy characters. However, one standout performance comes from Olivia Rose Keegan as Sara Campbell, the daughter of Faris’s Cindy Campbell. This is truly an inspired casting choice, and she is an absolute gem in this film. She’s doing such a perfect impression of Faris’s dimwitted line delivery, and you immediately get the sense they’re related, not just through their looks, but their demeanor. She deserves more comedy roles.

Now, one of the major talking pieces about this movie’s marketing is that this is a very offensive movie, and those easily offended should stay home. Marlon Wayans has described his family as “equal opportunity offenders,” who aim to offend anyone and everyone. As for the truth of that, this movie truly does take shots at everyone and everything, and some audience members may be offended by it, making light of certain dark things. However, comedy is not meant to be taken seriously. They ride a dangerous line by poking fun at serious political issues and controversies, but there are worse things to be enraged about than jokes in what is, admittedly, a very dumb parody movie with stupid, low-brow humor.

But the driving force of Scary Movie isn’t “offensive jokes”—it’s movie references. Like every entry in this franchise, we have tons of pop culture references designed to parody the latest horror films. While the story mainly parodies Scream 5 and 6, at some point, it feels like a long series of disconnected short SNL parodies of recent movies. If you go into Scary Movie looking for narrative coherence, you’re in the wrong theater. The story will often pause in its tracks entirely to do a bit that parodies another movie. If that bothers you, run. If you’ve seen the other movies in this series, you know what you’re in for. You don’t come to Scary Movie for the plot, you come for the gags.

Whether we’re doing bits that parody Get Out, Candyman, Weapons, or The Substance, this film is doing anything it can to be a product of its time. And part of the Wayans’ style is throwing everything they possibly can at the wall and seeing what sticks. As a result, a good amount of the jokes don’t land. For every one hilarious, standout, laugh-out-loud joke, there are about five or six that are far less funny, with others providing the occasional chuckle. I won’t act like every joke in this movie is hilarious because many of them fell flat. But you do respect them for trying.

We have our fourth wall breaks, including a decent amount of moments where the Wayans make fun of Faris and Hall for returning in Scary Movie 3 and 4, after the Wayans’ departure from the franchise. It is respectable how they manage to incorporate pieces from those films into this one; despite not being involved, the Wayans definitely watched them. 3 and 4 provided some truly funny moments. The same can’t be said about Scary Movie 5, however, which seems to be the easiest target for being the worst installment in the franchise, but largely goes unnoticed by the Wayans. Perhaps they wanted to forget that movie existed. Who could blame them? We all did too.

If you’re looking for a decent comedy movie, look no further than Scary Movie. It’s not the funniest in the series, nor is it the worst. We’re not getting humor on the level of last year’s The Naked Gun. We’re getting the humor that makes us laugh from time to time and has us sitting in silence at others. It could have been better, and it could have been worse. But you’ll get enough laughs here.