Scary Movie: Reliable Formula, Reliable Laughs
The Scary Movie franchise has never pretended to be high art. Its sixth installment, Scary Movie: Requel, understands this perfectly. While critics may clamour for reinvention, the latest entry delivers exactly what audiences expect: a relentless, laugh-a-minute parade of horror spoofs—formulaic, yes, but consistently funny.
To appreciate where this sequel lands, a brief look back is useful. The original Scary Movie (2000) was a paradigm-shifting satire of Scream and teen slashers—lean, mean, and wildly original. Scary Movie 2 (2001) doubled down on gross-out gags and set-piece chaos, earning cult status. Then the Wayans brothers exited. Scary Movie 3 (2003), directed by David Zucker, pivoted to The Ring and Signs, scoring big with its absurdist rhythm. Scary Movie 4 (2006) repeated the formula with diminishing but still serviceable returns. And Scary Movie 5 (2013) bottomed out—desperate, undernourished, and forgettable.
Enter the sixth film. Scary Movie: Requel targets the past decade of horror: Get Out, Hereditary, The Invisible Man, M3GAN, and the Scream requels. The plot—influencers spending a night in the infamous “Blackburn House”—is transparent scaffolding for jokes. And jokes arrive every sixty seconds. A TikTok exorcism, an “elevated horror” monologue interrupted by a pie to the face, a Barbarian Airbnb confusion gag that runs just long enough. None of it is groundbreaking. Much of it is recycled from earlier entries (the bumbling cop returns, cue the “I’ll be right back” groaner). Yet the audience laughs. Frequently. Predictably.
How does it compare to the past five? It is significantly better than the lifeless fifth installment—that’s faint praise but true. It lacks the fresh ferocity of the original or the inspired lunacy of Scary Movie 2. In fact, it most resembles Scary Movie 4: professionally assembled, mechanically paced, and reliably chuckle-worthy. Anna Faris’s cameo feels contractual, but the younger cast commits to the mayhem.
The core criticism—and it is a fair one—is formula. The film plays like a checklist: spoof rising dread, insert pop culture reference (a Saltburn bathtub parody arrives three months too late), reset, repeat. There are no surprises, no risks. But for a franchise now in its third decade, Scary Movie 6 understands its job. It does not aspire to be Airplane!; it aspires to be a comfortable fast-food comedy. On that level, it succeeds.
For fans who have stuck through the lows, this latest offering is a welcome, if unambitious, return to form. Laugh-a-minute? Yes. Memorable? Not particularly. But at this point, reliable laughter may be the truest form of horror comedy survival.
Elven Ho