‘Scary Movie’ Review: The Wayans Brothers Return Chopped, Unc, and Outdated on Arrival
In Scary Movie, neighborhood pothead Shorty (Marlon Wayans) is back, expressing frustration about being called “chopped” and “unc.” This is ironic; for the first time in over 25 years – since Scary Movie 2 – the Wayans brothers have returned to the franchise, regaining ownership from the Weinsteins. Instead of starting on the right foot spoofing early horror films and all their tropes, they mostly go full “old man yelling at cloud” mode over Gen-Z sensibilities they don’t understand. This mostly unfunny sixth installment takes the lazy approach of just reviving Scary Movie without growing it up, and it makes an onslaught of horror and pop culture references from 2022-2025 in true crude…Friedberg and Seltzer fashion. Yeah, it doesn’t even feel like them. As someone who spent the last week looking past the 2000s humor in its early installments, I find its insistence on keeping its crass humor alive in 2026 makes it worse. In this era, when more chronically online people call you “woke” for calling out lazy comedy, this acts like the equivalent, leaving you more unimpressed than offended. If anything, it’s cinematic proof the brothers are indeed “chopped” and “unc.”
Image copyright (©) Courtesy of Paramount Pictures
MPAA Rating: R (for strong bloody violence, gore, language throughout, crude sexual content, drug use, and some nudity.)
Runtime: 1 Hour and 36 Minutes (96 minutes)
Language: English
Production Companies: Miramax, Wayans Bros. Entertainment, Ugly Baby Productions, Original Film
Distributor: Paramount Pictures
Director: Michael Tiddes
Screenwriters: Marlon Wayans, Shawn Wayans, Keenen Ivory Wayans, Rick Alvarez, Craig Wayans
Cast: Marlon Wayans, Shawn Wayans, Anna Faris, Regina Hall, Damon Wayans Jr., Dave Sheridan, Jon Abrahams, Lochlyn Munro, Cheri Oteri, Chris Elliott, Kim Wayans, Gregg Wayans, Heidi Gardner, Olivia Rose Keegan, Sydney Park, Cameron Scott Roberts
U.S Release Date: June 5, 2026
In a mockery of the Radio Silence Scream installments, Ghostface puts Tuesday (Savannah Lee Nassif) in the ICU, and her estranged sister Sara (Olivia Rose Keegan) and her very unsuspecting boyfriend Jack (Cameron Scott Roberts) are lured back to Woodsville. There, Sara reunites with their estranged mother, Cindy Campbell (Anna Faris going sporting a Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween (2018) look), who has transformed her house into a fortified bunker preparing for Ghostface’s return. When she’s no help, they go to Sheriff Officer Doofy (Dave Sheridan) and get him out of his COVID bunker to help them solve the case. Eventually, Cindy reunites with her best friend Brenda Meeks (Regina Hall donning the Ma bob cut). Brenda’s twin kids, DEI (Sydney Park) and Brad (Gregg Wayans), brother Shorty (Marlon Wayans), and her ex, Ray (Shawn Wayans), all learn about the killer out to get them and must try to survive… but not without clowning on every horror IP released during the 2020s.
The Wayans are back and so are their old habits.
Anna Faris plays Cindy, Regina Hall plays Brenda, Olivia Rose Keegan plays Sara and Cameron Scott Roberts plays Jack in Scary Movie from Paramount Pictures.
Although they’re stuck in the past, Scary Movie still lands a few Zucker-style slapstick and sight-gag jokes. When it’s funny, it sparks major belly laughs, which is more than I can say about Scary Movie 4 and most definitely 5. The highlights come when the cast play off each other or execute ridiculous gags unrelated to the horror films being spoofed. Director Michael Tiddes emulates the Radio Silence Scream entries, providing a solid structural foundation reminiscent of the original Wayans films. However, Tiddes’ direction lacks the craft and focus that made the original films stand out.
While Keenen Ivory Wayans kept the film grounded with strong comedic performances, Tiddes mostly compiled thoughtless, cheap jokes referencing recent horror IPs, offering little commentary, just crude punchlines with no discernible effort. Yet they omitted the Paramount-owned A Quiet Place or the X trilogy. I would mention the A24 horrors, but writers Marlon, Shawn, Keenen Ivory, Craig Wayans, and Rick Alvarez prove they’re more chronically online than they are real horror fans. They call the film It Follows obscure, and the best they can do with a Weapons joke is a kid shouting “6 7,” while running throughout the night. While it had some sort of flow in the first act, Scary Movie quickly devolves into a series of sketches that are slightly below even the worst SNL parody. The middle act is so unfocused, it’s strung together like your friend with the worst sense of humor’s horror-themed TikTok feed on autoplay. It’s a significant decline from the clear, concise earlier installments, especially Scary Movie 2, in which a lone haunted house setting sparked more creative gags.
The film fails to fully exploit the series’ real lynchpins, Faris and Hall. Their first reunion in 20 years is squandered. Though they don’t phone it in, they’re criminally underused. This might parallel Scream (2022), limiting Neve Campbell and Courtney Cox. But I digress because it’s the Marlon and Shawn show, repeating the same tired “Ray is gay and possibly a rapist” and “Shorty is a pothead” jokes. It may be Wayans’ made series but they don’t recognize that Faris and Hall become the face of the franchise in their absence in 3 & 4. Hell, Hall has become such an icon since then that I find it amusing that a good number of the movies this spoof, including 2025’s Sinners, Weapons, and even K-Pop Demon Hunters, in an initially funny bit that ends in a fetishy punchline, were in the same awards season as Best Picture-winning, Regina Hall-starring One Battle After Another. At least they gave her the AND credit, but at what real cost? When the focus shifts from Wayans mugging, it’s squarely the Scream 5 parody characters who are otherwise decent for their parts: Olivia Rose Keegan as Sara occasionally nails Faris’ signature spaced-out gaze and comical physicality, and the Jack Quaid stand-in Cameron Scott Roberts hilariously perfects every Quaid-ism. While underutilized, this serves its anti-legacy-sequel message, which I enjoyed, even if delivered in the most “okay X-er” way imaginable.
Scary Movie trades horror satire for pathetic generational grievances.
Shawn Wayans plays Ray in Scary Movie from Paramount Pictures.
The only sharp area in its commentary is on the Hollywood legacy-sequel trend, putting a hilarious new spin on “passing the torch,” and the shitty ageism that goes along with how IPs treat franchise characters. Aside from the complete lack of narrative flow and its lazy humor, its commentatory execution targets the younger generation in such an ill-fated manner. Listen, when it’s funny, it's hysterical; when it’s not, I want to scream “grow up” at the screen. Though Scary Movie has been hyping itself to have us clutching our pearls, it did start on a semi-progressive note with it featuring Scary Movie Greg Phillippe (Lochlyn Munro) and his trans son (Benny Zielke, a trans and non-binary actor) slapping the shit out of his dad “like a man,” with complete testosterone energy, and Phillippe looking back with pride. But whatever hopes I had were utterly punched down by the writers’ incompatibility with the younger generation. It’s nothing but bad gender-fueled humor and Gen-Z’s social justice “woke-ism,” down to Sydney Park’s character name being DEI, and an uncomfortable hate crime of a death scene that made me seethe with rage. It tries to hit both sides of the political spectrum, but even then, with the umpteenth Fox News and January 6 joke, it’s all surface-level humor that stopped being funny in 2023, it spends more time attacking the youth than anyone else. A lot of it makes the Wayans seem like old curmudgeons even though the way its horror spoofing flow arrives like Buscemi asking “how do you do fellow kids.”
The funniest thing about Scary Movie’s release is that it currently have to fight against the Gen-Z horrors at the box office: Obsession and Backrooms. But when it’s time for Scary Movie to inevitably spoof them in 7, which apparently Marlon says he’s planning to make, who the fuck are they gonna get to write it? It’s proven they’re too stubborn to get anyone of the youth in the writers room with them. Considering they've spent so much time ostracizing the current generation who are giving those films money and currently shaking up Hollywood right now? What real joke could be made outside of the obvious “Shorty is so high he tripped himself to the backrooms” with Marlon mugging to the camera?
Screenshot that sentence now, and I’ll see you in a year and a half when it comes to fruition.
If you’re like, “Well, it’s a Scary Movie. It should be bad.” Well, I’m sorry we had some of the best spoof movies in recent memory with Nirvanna The Band The Show The Movie – high in my top 10 for the year – while Naked Gun (2025) made my top 25 of last year. Where were y’all when The Blackening came out in 2023?! Both movies made an effort to have each joke stand out while focusing on the type of movie they’re parodying. To quote the Lonely Island’s “Natalie’s Rap 2.0” lyric, “Wow, I gotta say, it seems like you’re almost exactly the same, but with current references.” At least this made for a better Scream than Scream 7.
Final Statement
Outdated on arrival, Scary Movie occasionally recaptures the anarchic spirit that made the franchise a hit, but its obsession with dunking on younger generations and recycling the same old jokes proves the Wayans brothers are exactly what Shorty fears most: chopped, unc, and completely out of touch.
