Scary Movie 6 sees the return of the Wayans brothers, 25 years since their last Scary Movie outing. With this new movie, they intend on righting the wrongs of the David Zucker films, seemingly trying to completely forget about Scary Movie 5, and make it just as 'offensive' as ever. However, I feel as if this fails in both its comedy and its attempts at being offensive, partly because of its steadfastness at being offensive rather than simply making comedy they'd enjoy, which happens to cross a few lines.
There is absolutely a way to do a good Scary Movie sequel in today's age, even with all the 'offensive' jokes. However, this movie's humour is almost the same as the first, just with less focus on actually being funny. If they'd evolved the comedy to even be more offensive to a newer generation, I'm sure this could've been okay, but this just drags along, recycling the same pronoun and sex jokes over and over again. I'm sure this was funny for many who are already fans of the Wayans and the original movies, but as somebody who isn't, there really was no appeal for me.
The worst part of this is that almost every scene felt disconnected from the one before it. After a while, they scrapped any attempts at creating a cohesive story and just darted from reference to reference with no connection to the plot. One moment, they're doing a Kai Cenat stream, the next a botox appointment in reference to The Substance, next a Sinners reference, with the only connective tissue being these familiar faces. Even with all its problems, at least the first movie was intentional with its references. Most, if not all of them, felt like they earned their place somehow and moved some semblance of a plot forward, rather than simply being thrown in because it's a movie that was released recently.
Where this movie was at its best, it was going back to its original Scream references. This was mostly in its first scene and last act. Teyana Taylor was, unfortunately, possibly the best part of this movie. This was mostly because it actually felt like she was parodying something, rather than trying to parody everything. The final act actually felt like it was leading somewhere, rather than just being another gratuitous reference. That is, until they abandoned all reason to confront Scary Movie 3 and 4 directly, in the form of Anthony Anderson.
Many of these references didn't feel as if they went anywhere. One of the main characters was a parody of Wednesday, and yet there was absolutely no reference to that, apart from the mere existence of that character. There were many Final Destination: Bloodlines references throughout the first act, and part of the second, yet they started to be muddled up with the Scream 5, 'passing the baton' references.
The thing that was most surprising to me was that, even with all the nostalgia for the first movie and its themes, the same sets from that first movie weren't used. While Scary Movie was primarily filmed on location in British Columbia, Canada, Scary Movie 6 was shot entirely in Tyler Perry Studios in Atlanta.
Ultimately, Scary Movie 6 focuses so much on offending people that it forgets it's supposed to also be funny. They recycle the same jokes from the first movie, making no attempt at modernising the concept for an interesting satire on today's cinema. While new movies are used, the parody feels worn out, partly due to it not changing after six movies and 26 years. We can only hope that the Wayans brothers see that this franchise is on its last legs and decide to kill it off before it sours itself. Hopefully, it doesn't follow Scream this time.
No AI was used in writing this article.