As October rolls in, Hollywood is gearing up for Halloween with a slew of new horror and thriller releases.
For instance, there’s “Salem’s Lot,” produced by James Wan, and the sensational “Terrifier 3,” which has already raked in nearly $20 million at the North American box office in just four days.
The “Terrifier” series has become a major dark horse in recent years.
Beyond the typical slasher and suspense horror flicks, there’s a unique horror-comedy on the horizon that’s worth keeping an eye on.
Paramount Pictures and Miramax Films have announced a reboot of the “Scary Movie” franchise.
The new installment will stay true to the series’ signature spoof comedy style, with Neal H. Moritz (of the “Fast & Furious” fame) serving as producer.
Production for the new “Scary Movie” is slated to begin this fall, with a release planned for 2025. The cast and director are yet to be officially announced.
As one of Hollywood’s most recognizable “horror” franchises, “Scary Movie” first emerged in the early 2000s, spoofing the 1996 thriller “Scream” with a heavy dose of comedy and parodies of numerous classic film scenes.
This is precisely why the “Scary Movie” series remains a beloved topic among movie fans to this day.
So, let’s take a trip back to the summer of 2000 and explore how “Scary Movie,” with its blend of parody, homage, and cinephile elements, managed to captivate audiences.
A True “Anti-Genre” Film
In the 80s and 90s, the “Big Four” of slasher villains – Freddy Krueger (“A Nightmare on Elm Street”), Leatherface (“The Texas Chainsaw Massacre”), Michael Myers (“Halloween”), and Jason Voorhees (“Friday the 13th”) – were household names. The market became saturated with formulaic horror films, leading to audience fatigue.
Typically, when a film genre reaches its peak, “anti-genre” films emerge, deconstructing tired tropes and offering a fresh perspective.
The “Scary Movie” series was born from this very environment.
Director Keenen Ivory Wayans capitalized on audience weariness with clichés, blending commentary with horror to create a truly “anti-genre horror film.”
Despite its R-rating, the film’s focus on spoofing and ridiculing horror films meant that the plot was secondary. The constant stream of references, sudden scares, and laugh-out-loud moments offered audiences a completely new experience.
The low-budget film, with a production cost of just $19 million, went on to gross $278 million, surpassing even “Scream 3” ($161 million) released the same year, proving the appeal of this upstart.
It’s worth noting that the tagline for the first “Scary Movie” was “Relentless. Ruthless. And coming soon to a theater near you.”
However, faced with such a massive box office success, director Keenen Ivory Wayans quickly reunited the original cast and crew to produce a sequel the following year. This time, the tagline was “More Relentless. More Ruthless,” embracing the series’ entertainment spirit.
The series continued for over a decade, with “Scary Movie 5,” released in 2013, being the last installment before the reboot.
Tropes and Taunts
Watching the “Scary Movie” series is like watching a collection of skits, where we get a glimpse of the ruthless mockery of American horror movie tropes within a story full of clichés.
For example, “Scary Movie 1” tells a typical horror movie story template.
The protagonist, Cindy, and her five friends accidentally run over a pedestrian while driving.
To prevent this incident from affecting their bright futures, the six decide to destroy the body and pretend nothing happened.
However, when they return to school, an anonymous threatening letter claiming to know their crime appears, and their companions are murdered in various bizarre and ridiculous ways.
And the real killer is actually lurking around Cindy…
It is not difficult to find that the story of “Scary Movie 1” actually uses the main plot of the then-popular youth horror film “I Know What You Did Last Summer” (1997):
A story about high school students who run over people while driving, then constantly suspect each other, and eventually lead to tragedy.
“I Know What You Did Last Summer”
However, director Keenen Ivory Wayans boldly “opens up” in “Scary Movie 1” and uses various nonsensical plots to complain about the rationality of “I Know What You Did Last Summer.”
For example, after the car accident in “Scary Movie 1”, the pedestrian is actually unharmed.
However, several high school students fell into self-pity and even decided to forcibly cause an accident and throw the passerby into the river.
This is undoubtedly a satire on the practice of youth crime films in the 90s that only focused on contradictions and ignored logic.
In the later stages of the film, “Scary Movie 1” “spoofed” scenes from several classic films such as “Scream” and “The Shining.”
When the heroine Cindy receives a threatening call, the ghost-faced killer proudly says that Cindy will definitely not be able to find his location, but when the heroine turns around, she finds the killer hiding behind the sofa.
This common American horror routine of giving advance notice before committing a crime is also ruthlessly ridiculed in the film.
Ubiquitous “Homage”
Besides mocking horror movies, another highlight of the “Scary Movie” series is “paying tribute” to classic movie scenes of other types:
The final battle between the heroine Cindy and the ghost-faced killer pays tribute to the bullet time and kung fu fight scenes in the sci-fi blockbuster “The Matrix”;
In the middle of the film, when the male and female protagonists are about to get intimate, the film directly breaks the fourth wall and shows the on-site filming staff to the audience. This scene pays tribute to the classic absurd comedy “The Truman Show.”
Later, with the continuous release of the “Scary Movie” series, more and more movies “suffered”:
“Scary Movie 2” makes fun of “The Exorcist” and “The Haunting”;
“Scary Movie 4” directly imitates Spielberg’s sci-fi film “War of the Worlds” at the beginning;
And “Scary Movie 5” in 2013 uses “Little Plum” and “Inception” as infinite jokes…
It can be said that as a series that focuses on spoofing, “Scary Movie” gives ordinary audiences unlimited happiness and also allows movie fans to feel the joy of finding easter eggs.
Even if the series has always been criticized by film critics for excessive “poop and pee” and “restricted” plots, the movie-watching experience of screaming and laughing at the same time is still remembered by many movie fans.
So, can the new version of “Scary Movie” rebooted after ten years continue the box office myth of making a small profit? Let us wait for the new work to arrive next year.
The secret to the success of this seemingly spoof series may be as director Keenen Ivory Wayans said:
“Since you can’t really scare the audience, why not just make a comedy!”