The Scary Movie franchise was a fairly novel concept when it first debuted, taking the Scream formula of mocking slasher films and adding in a number of pop culture references to truly ground it in farce. The first film, in what was never intended to be a franchise, was such a hit that a second film was commissioned. But something was lost between that first spark of genius and Scary Movie 2 … and hasn’t been recovered since.
The Scary Movie franchise devolved into a horror film franchise that subsided by just lampooning relatively recent pop culture phenomena and popular films. Instead of nuance there were just parodies of other, better films designed as a sort of pop culture yearbook. When Tom Cruise jumped over a couch on Oprah it made it into a Scary Movie sequel, if only because it’s something people would’ve seen and not actually relevant from a story-telling standpoint. It’s moments like these that made it into the film, and not the sort of ruthlessly genuine prodding of horror films in period, that marked the main difference between the original’s brilliance and the sequels.
With each sequel this sort of scrapbook style of film-making became progressively worse, existing only to please the mouth-breathing types who view fart jokes as the highest form of comedy. Scary Movie 5 descended into theatres and was made cheaply enough that another sequel might be in the works; with a budget of $20 million and a worldwide gross of over $70 million the franchise was profitable, if only marginally. In an era where sequels and franchises are Hollywood’s go to ideas a sixth Scary Movie wouldn’t be surprising.
Really, though, there’s no way the film franchise can sink to any lower depths than Scary Movie 5. It might be one of the worst films ever made and liking this film should be a capital crime. At a minimum you shouldn’t be able to actively discuss, watch or own a movie if you enjoyed Scary Movie 5. Focusing on parodying the Paranormal Activity franchise, meshed with spoofs of Black Swan, Mama, Inception and others, the film is worthless.
Pure and simply worthless.
There’s no real point to a film like this. It exists because a bunch of easy, unintelligent and unfunny parodies of other films could be made.
There are Deleted & Extended Scenes that don’t add much back into the film.
Timeless Media Group present Scary Movie 5. Directed by Malcolm D Lee. Written by Pat Proft and David Zucker. Starring: Charlie Sheen, Lindsay Lohan, Simon Rex, Ashley Tisdale. Released: August 20, 2013.
