The original Scary Movie arrived in 2000 as a gleefully crude torpedo aimed at the slasher revival, and four sequels followed. By the time the fifth installment limped into theaters in 2013, stripped of its original creative architects and drained of its signature anarchy, the series had become something close to a mercy case. The Weinstein Company had commandeered the franchise for chapters three through five, and the results spoke plainly: the Wayans brothers’ particular brand of comedy requires the Wayans brothers.
Thirteen years passed. Now they are back, with Anna Faris, Regina Hall, and the numbering abandoned. The new film is titled simply Scary Movie, a branding gesture that simultaneously salutes and parodies the legacy-sequel playbook it intends to mock.
The timing is reasonable, if imperfect. Horror has experienced a genuine cultural renaissance, with films like Sinners and Weapons achieving the kind of awards-season gravity once reserved for prestige dramas. The question the film cannot quite outrun is this: does this reunion reflect creative hunger, or is commercial nostalgia doing most of the driving?
A Parody of a Parody (of a Parody)
Cindy Campbell has been waiting. In the years since we last saw her, Faris’s signature character has transformed from oblivious survivor into something approximating a doomsday prophet: stocked with supplies, estranged from her daughters, and spiritually aligned with later-era Jamie Lee Curtis in the Halloween revival. Her two daughters are Sara (Olivia Rose Keegan) and Tuesday (Savannah Lee Nassif). Tuesday’s name is a legal sidestep around “Wednesday,” a joke the film deploys with exactly the frequency a joke like that deserves, which is once, and then several more times after that.
A new Ghostface killer begins hunting the younger generation, reassembling the original quartet. Cindy reunites with Brenda (Regina Hall), perpetually stoned Shorty (Marlon Wayans), and Ray (Shawn Wayans), whose sexual identity remains, per tradition, an open secret to everyone except Ray.
The film’s architecture follows the 2022 Scream revival with uncomfortable closeness. The first half pauses at length to establish the new characters, mirroring that film’s investment in its next-generation cast. This is either respectful homage or structural laziness, and the line between the two is thinner than the filmmakers seem to appreciate. Once the sketch-comedy segments arrive in the second half, the film has effectively abandoned any pretense of sustained narrative. The Substance, Get Out, Sinners, Longlegs, Smile, Final Destination, Terrifier, M3GAN, Nosferatu, Ma, and Michael all receive varying degrees of comedic attention.
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Here lies the film’s most significant structural problem, and it is philosophical as much as cinematic. The Scream franchise was itself a meta-commentary on slasher conventions from its very first frame in 1996. Layering a parody on top of it produces what might be called satirical inflation: each degree of remove reduces the comedic value of the original observation. By 2026, mocking Scream for its self-awareness is roughly equivalent to critiquing a stand-up comedian for making jokes. The targets have already done the work.
This matters because the horror landscape of the last decade offered the Wayans genuinely rich, unprocessed material. Films like Midsommar, Weapons, and the Conjuring series carry specific tonal signatures that beg to be exaggerated. The summer 2026 hits Backrooms and Obsession go untouched entirely. A franchise with 26 years of cultural credibility chose instead to stay close to the Ghostface mythology, as if the open sea of contemporary horror were somehow less inviting than its most familiar waters.
Old Hands, New Tricks, and One Revelation
Anna Faris has always been the franchise’s best argument for its own existence. Cindy Campbell, reincarnated here as a survivalist recluse nursing old wounds with alcohol, mirrors the arc of Jamie Lee Curtis and Neve Campbell across their respective franchises: the terrorized woman who eventually becomes the terror. Faris commits to the bit with precision and a generous self-deprecation, spending much of the film in straight-man mode before the climax hands her the keys. She takes them. The final act is hers in a way that feels earned.
Regina Hall, playing Brenda with an energy channeled partly from Octavia Spencer’s Ma, is the second pillar. The rapport between Hall and Faris is the most reliable commodity the film offers: two veterans who have logged enough hours in this particular comedy gymnasium to make hard material look easy. Their scenes together suggest a different film, a tighter one, possibly a better one.
Then there are the Wayans brothers. Marlon’s Shorty is a coherent if narrow comedic construction: perpetually stoned, always cackling near the edges of the action, reliably good for a certain grade of absurdist energy. The character hasn’t evolved since 2000, but within those constraints, Marlon commits fully. Shawn’s Ray presents a more complicated case. The premise of a closeted man insisting loudly on his straightness has ossified into a series of gay-panic jokes that land with diminishing force across 96 minutes. There is a distinction between satire of repression and simple repetition of it, and Scary Movie occasionally crosses that line without appearing to notice.
The film’s genuine revelation is Olivia Rose Keegan. Playing Sara, Cindy’s eldest daughter, Keegan delivers a physical and vocal impression of Faris that transcends impersonation and becomes its own comic invention. She captures the timing, the wide-eyed obliviousness, the precise register of Faris’s most endearing awkwardness, all while remaining recognizably herself. Keegan is extending a performance, not merely reproducing one. If the franchise intends to continue, she represents its most credible inheritance.
Supporting the ensemble, Sydney Park lands the film’s sharpest set piece, and Teyana Taylor’s opening cameo, playing a heightened and award-conscious version of herself, establishes a comedic altitude the rest of the film aspires toward but seldom reaches.
Nobody Gets a Pass (Except the Movie Itself)
The Wayans’ comedic philosophy has remained essentially fixed since Don’t Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood: nobody gets a pass. Racial stereotypes, LGBTQ+ culture, political tribalism, gender identity, and celebrity are all fed into the same blender, set to maximum, and served without garnish. The film takes aim at MAGA politics and Fox News with genuine venom, then pivots to skewer progressive culture with comparable force. The ideological evenhandedness is real, if occasionally exhausting.
This approach carries a certain intellectual consistency. Satire that protects any group from ridicule is advocacy wearing a costume, and the Wayans have never been in the advocacy business. Marlon Wayans’ personal relationship with his transgender child lends some credibility to the film’s gender humor, suggesting the comedy, barbed as it is, comes from familiarity rather than contempt. Offensive, yes. Mean-spirited, not quite.
The comedy that works tends to demonstrate genuine wit about the mechanics of the films being parodied. A Final Destination tribute unfolds almost entirely in the background of a scene, rewarding attentive viewers rather than announcing itself. Ray’s church confession, a cascading inventory of all the gay activities he is definitively not going to pursue, is the film’s single funniest sustained sequence. Sydney Park’s subway scene, in which a bystander abandons a stabbing victim upon learning their preferred pronouns, earns its laugh by making a real cultural absurdity viscerally funny rather than merely topical. The K-Pop Demon Hunters animated segment and the Sinners church parody show genuine creative flashes, suggesting the Wayans, when they choose to swing freely, can still hit.
The failures are equally instructive. The Get Out parody drops Shorty into the Sunken Place, which triggers an anime musical number built around marijuana. The idea has structural promise. The execution collapses into chaos without landing a point. The Longlegs bit, featuring a returning character at a bus stop, disconnects from the film entirely and evaporates, leaving no narrative thread and no comedic residue. Art the Clown appears as Santa and does what Art the Clown always does, which is precisely the problem: Terrifier already operates at the extremity of grotesque absurdism. Imitating it produces nothing the source material hasn’t already produced.
The film’s most revealing moment comes when Brenda explains directly to the camera that they will not be parodying It Follows because the audience won’t know what it is. This is candid self-limitation dressed as a wink. The franchise has historically demonstrated broader ambition. Choosing the cheap seats over the sharper gag is a creative decision, and it shapes everything around it. The Wayans are treating the broadest possible audience as a ceiling rather than a floor, and that instinct, repeated across 96 minutes, is the real constraint on a film that might have aimed considerably higher.
The Bones of a Movie, Looking for Muscle
Director Michael Tiddes brings one conspicuous skill to the project: he can replicate the visual grammar of his targets. The Scream compositions are faithfully rendered, the Substance body horror aesthetic is recognizable on contact, and the Get Out cinematographic claustrophobia is approximated with real competence. This is no small technical achievement. The problem is that reproducing a look is categorically different from interrogating one. Tiddes demonstrates he can see these films clearly; the question the film never answers is what he has to say about them.
The editing is the more pressing issue. At 96 minutes, Scary Movie is efficiently sized, but the internal pacing within individual scenes is frequently erratic. The opening with Teyana Taylor crackles. The first act, patient by design, builds character with more care than the genre typically affords, creating some goodwill before the momentum stalls. The second act carries the film’s most significant structural weight and collapses under it: scenes that should end at the laugh instead continue past it, a recurring Wayans habit whose cumulative cost exceeds that of any single bad joke.
The five-person writing team, comprising Marlon, Shawn, and Keenen Ivory Wayans alongside Craig Wayans and Rick Alvarez, produces a script that reads as a committee document: every voice present, no single editorial authority dominant. The result is a film that is funny in scattered bursts and directionless in the stretches between them. That unevenness is both the franchise’s oldest characteristic and its most persistent limitation.
The horror-parody film Scary Movie (colloquially known as Scary Movie 6) premiered in theaters nationwide on June 5, 2026. This highly anticipated installment marks a major homecoming for the franchise, reuniting the core Wayans brothers behind the camera and bringing back original fan-favorite stars for a fresh round of slasher spoofs. Because the film has just made its theatrical debut, it is currently available to watch exclusively on the big screen in cinemas. Following its traditional theatrical window, the movie is expected to transition to digital platforms and streaming services later this year under Paramount’s distribution ecosystem.
Where to Watch Scary Movie (2026) Online
Full Credits
Title: Scary Movie
Distributor: Paramount Pictures, Miramax
Release date: June 5, 2026
Rating: R
Running time: 96 minutes
Director: Michael Tiddes
Writers: Marlon Wayans, Shawn Wayans, Keenen Ivory Wayans, Craig Wayans, Rick Alvarez
Producers and Executive Producers: Marlon Wayans, Shawn Wayans, Keenen Ivory Wayans, Craig Wayans, Rick Alvarez, Jonathan Glickman, Thom Zadra, Alexandra Loewy, Marc Weinstock, Marsha L. Swinton, Neal H. Moritz
Cast: Anna Faris, Regina Hall, Marlon Wayans, Shawn Wayans, Jon Abrahams, Lochlyn Munro, Dave Sheridan, Anthony Anderson, Cheri Oteri, Chris Elliott, Damon Wayans Jr., Kim Wayans, Heidi Gardner, Olivia Rose Keegan, Felissa Rose
Director of Photography (Cinematographer): Terry Stacey
Editors: Jonathan Schwartz
Composer: Haim Mazar
The Review
Scary Movie
Scary Movie is a fitfully funny reunion that coasts on genuine affection for its cast while falling short of the creative ambition the moment deserved. Faris and Hall remain formidable, Keegan is a legitimate discovery, and scattered set pieces land with real force. The franchise, though, mistakes familiarity for invention. A horror landscape richer than any in recent memory sat available, and the Wayans chose their most comfortable corner of it.
PROS
- Faris and Hall are as sharp as ever
- Olivia Rose Keegan is a revelation
- Several genuinely clever set pieces
- Brisk 96-minute runtime
- Equal-opportunity satirical instincts
CONS
- Over-reliance on Scream as structural crutch
- Scenes routinely outlast their laughs
- Shawn Wayans' Ray stuck in a stale loop
- Missed opportunities across the wider horror landscape
- Script feels crowded, editorially undisciplined
