SCARY MOVIE (2026)

“Guess who’s back?” Eminem asks, in a throwback to his 2002 hit “Without Me,” used in the trailer for the throwback sequel Scary Movie. The question is rhetorical: we all remember the Wayans brothers because they never really went away. Dance Flick (2009), A Haunted House (2013), A Haunted House 2 (2014), and Fifty Shades of Black (2016) were all Marlon Wayans chasing that high after his family was ousted from the franchise they started.

Scary Movie was initially taken over by white filmmakers (the Weinsteins), the sequels by more white filmmakers (David Zucker and Pat Proft), and yet more white screenwriters (Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer) tangentially involved ruined the parody genre altogether. Finally, the rebooted Scary Movie is in the hands of yet more white people. Director Michael Tiddes and writer Rick Alvarez are both Caucasian and have been churning out the last dozen or so Marlon Wayans films. Every single one of them is rated rotten on Rotten Tomatoes, with the highest audience score sitting at 51%. The advertising posits that audiences have been waiting 26 years for a good Scary Movie, but these guys have been waiting 13 years just to make a good movie.

With Harvey Weinstein out, new Miramax CEO Jonathan Glickman personally gifted the rights to their near-billion-dollar franchise back to the Wayans brothers. It’s a little shocking they still got this made; given the careers of the writer and director, they were definitely spittin’ on that thang to get work. Is that too crude? Well, ‘the most offensive comedy of the year’ only goes halfway there.

The opening starts on the right foot. It’s neither bad nor particularly good, which is par for the course. Despite any reservations, Tiddes not only directs a decent-looking comedy but recreates much of the source material with care and attention. I dare say this looks better than some of the films they are parodying. Not the Jordan Peele ones, let’s not go mad. As for parodying those films, I’m transvestigating this parody and, let’s just say, you can tell.

With Marlon having a trans son, this should give him a personal, nuanced perspective for authentic comedy. Instead, it’s really nothing you haven’t heard online already. Scary Movie bizarrely appeases no camp; it tries to be positive by featuring supportive, well-meaning parents, but it cannot deliver any genuine witticisms from a trans voice that suggest the writers know what they are talking about. The cleverest it gets is ‘you’re about to identify as dead’, which is honestly something the real Ghostface might say if Scream had any edge these days. They do, however, get an ‘A’ for effort by casting trans actor Benny Zielke in the role.

A parody of Sinners (2025) featuring Ray (Shawn Wayans) going straight for church is a strong, if blunt, example of subverting material for satire. This commentary is rare but leagues smarter than their past work. Doofy (Dave Sheridan) is still an idiot, but his ‘special needs’ humour has been refined into something more socially farcical; he is pardoned for his crimes in the original film as well as storming the Capitol, and believes the world is still in a COVID-19 lockdown. In true circular fashion, they make a Diddy joke, which is itself a reference to an accidental Puff Daddy joke from the first film.

The quicker jokes work best in the style of The Naked Gun, such as one of the teens downing a pill bottle labelled ‘mommy issues’, whereas the long-winded set pieces only occasionally outstay their welcome. An insane animated sequence involving K-Pop Demon Hunters (2025) went right over my head, yet I appreciated the effort.

A memorable bit from Half Baked (1998) is stretched across 90 minutes; have you seen Get Out… with weed? This is repeated ad nauseam with every popular horror film you can think of. Scary Movie 7 will almost certainly feature Shorty (Marlon Wayans) stuck in the Backrooms because he is on the ‘dank shit’. One genuine laugh came from the writers not even bothering to think of a punchline: ‘You can’t outrun your past. Wherever you go, It Follows… that’s where we’d flashback, but it’s a bit obscure.’

The biggest disappointment of this new entry is that, after The Naked Gun (2025) referenced “Let’s Get Retarded” by the Black Eyed Peas, Bottoms (2023) with “f**got #1” and “f**got #2”, and Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie (2025) won a Canadian Screen Award for an original song by two white guys singing in the voice of Bill Cosby—or just any tweet ever—Scary Movie simply isn’t offensive. Eminem opined, ”cause we need a little controversy, ’cause it feels so empty without me’, and he’s right; this feels lacking in what it promised. All the Black actors throw around the n-word with aplomb, but give me a Sinners parody where the white characters do an acoustic cover of “N**gas in Paris” and I might be as shocked as the excessive reaction shots punctuated throughout.

They also parody Terrifier 3 (2024), which is self-defeating because kids playing with body parts is far less offensive than the source material of a killer clown blowing those kids up. Scary Movie keeps the kid gloves on—including that silvery, shiny one. Parodying Scream, Scary Movie, and a Michael Jackson biopic all at the same time represents the stars aligning, and they go easy on him. There is no ‘he’s back from the 2000s and after our kids’ joke; MJ, or Jermaine, simply falls over whilst doing the moonwalk.

“What we’re trying to do is bring back laughter. This is about bringing back comedy the way it used to be. And I think the only way to do it is you have to cancel the cancel culture. We’re gonna do what we always do. We’re gonna make fun of everybody because we’re equal opportunity offenders.”—Marlon Wayans, producer-writer-actor.

The trailer doubles down on that goal, putting viewers on notice with a sequence of intertitles that spell out: ‘There are no safe spaces.’ Marlon Wayans recognises the risk of risky comedy, noting in an interview: ‘If you tell a joke and 100 people laugh and one person walks out, that’s still a good joke. If 100 people walk out and only one person is laughing, that’s a bad joke.’ Scary Movie confidently mocks ‘elevated comedies’—the kind you don’t laugh at, but they make you feel smart—yet this film manages to achieve only half of that. It’s telling that the biggest laugh at my screening was a nostalgic nod to White Chicks (2004).

As a legacy sequel, Scary Movie is equally reflective of the new generation. The young cast all have their chance to shine: Olivia Rose Keegan does a solid impression of her character’s mother, Cindy, though we would rather just have Anna Faris; Savannah Lee Nasif is fine but lumbered with zero good jokes, up to and including her character being named Tuesday; Cameron Scott Roberts delivers a commendable Jack Quaid impression; and the others simply fill the space. With such an expansive ensemble scattered across various parodies, not everyone gets their moment.

Sydney Park, whose character is literally named Dei, delivers that pronoun joke featured in the trailer but is barely in the film once the script exhausts its supply of current internet lingo. As for the veterans, any Lochlyn Munro and Jon Abrahams fans will be left disappointed by their small parts (there is a a baby dick joke there), whilst Shannon Elizabeth was ignored entirely—though they somehow found room for Carmen Electra. Cameos from Teyana Taylor, Chris Elliott, and Kenan Thompson border on spoilers. I am neither young nor Black enough to tell if that was actually the streamer Kai Cenat.

Marlon and Shawn have their characters down pat, clearly committing to every performance turned up to eleven. Unsurprisingly, the writers give themselves ample screen time, but even when the material falls flat, it’s clear they’re not here merely for the paycheque. Faris and Regina Hall make welcome returns and slip effortlessly back into their roles, complete with a number of self-aware gags about having previously returned for the Wayans-less sequels.

The finale hits the themes of sequels, franchising, and the generation gap hard, and this real-world, culture-as-business satire proves to be the film’s most inspired material. Scary Movie works best when it listens to the people, putting predominantly Black audience voices on screen and asking what’s up with that. This nostalgia trip ventures so far into meta-territory that it rides comfortably on the memories of laughs gone by. More than any other legacy sequel, this becomes a surreal echo chamber where the most parodied film in Scary Movie (2026) is Scary Movie (2000). The old adage dictates that if you did not like the original films, you are not going to enjoy this one; the late critic Roger Ebert noted in his review of the original that horror movies were required reading, and the same now applies to the extended Wayans filmography. To channel Ray, Scary Movie has its head right up its own ass—but it’s a reasonably good ass.

USA | 2026 | 96 MINUTES | 2.39:1 | COLOUR | ENGLISH

Cast & Crew

director: Michael Tiddes.
writers: Marlon Wayans, Shawn Wayans, Keenen Ivory Wayans, Craig Wayans & Rick Alvarez (based on characters created by Shawn Wayans, Marlon Wayans, Buddy Johnson, Phil Beauman, Jason Friedberg & Aaron Seltzer).
starring: Marlon Wayans, Shawn Wayans, Anna Faris, Regina Hall, Dave Sheridan, Olivia Rose Keegan, Savannah Lee Nassif, Cameron Scott Roberts, Sydney Park, Gregg Wayans, Lochlyn Munro, Jon Abrahams, Cheri Oteri, Teyana Taylor, Chris Elliott, Kenan Thompson & Carmen Electra.