Scary Movie (2026) | Film Review

26 years after escaping a masked killer - Cindy (Anna Faris), Brenda (Regina Hall), Shorty (Marlon Wayans), Ray (Shawn Wayans) and their kids are hunted by a masked killer once again.

I'm a fan of the Scary Movie franchise, so while I wasn't hugely excited to see this one, I was looking forward to it.

I had such a weird experience with this film. The first time I saw it, I really liked it. I think this was down to the atmosphere and the surprise of the parodies and cameos, because going to see it again less than a week later, I disliked it so much I could almost say I hated it.

So I'm gonna go down the middle and say this film was fine - but there will definitely be polarising opinions because there's some great things about it, but also a lot of bad things.

The way this film was being promoted, the filmmakers kept saying that it was made to offend, it pokes fun at everything, it pushes boundaries, and even the tag line on the poster is 'every line will be crossed'. Well I'm struggling to recall a single line that was crossed. 

Whether the jokes were funny or not is a different question, but I never found the humour to be too offensive or pushing boundaries. Which makes me feel like the filmmakers either didn't try hard enough, wanted to push this idea as some kind of clickbait, or just have no idea what's offensive to a 2026 audience.

The best thing about the film for me is the movies the film parodies and references. Not all of them worked with the plot, which is typical of a Scary Movie movie, but they had a great selection and that made it really fun to watch.

It was also great to see the old characters. Most people are a fan of this franchise for Cindy and Brenda and it was great to see them. There was a weird balance, where we saw much more of Shorty than any other character, and I don't think that really worked for anyone. The character is fun in small doses, and wasn't even that funny in the other movies, so more of the focus being on him didn't always work for me.

But I did like the introduction of the new characters. That's not to say they were all great, but I liked the idea of bringing in the children of the main characters in a way that parodied Scream 5 nicely. That said, even for a parody the acting wasn't great.

Some of the scenes go on for way too long, which wouldn't be a huge problem if they were really funny, but there aren't that many really funny jokes in the film. And even when things are funny, they're more amusing than laugh-out-loud hilarious.

A lot of the jokes are really easy - and with that, they then either overexplain what the point of the joke is, or it just doesn't go far enough.

There wasn't enough of the actual plot, considering they were mainly parodying one movie, and instead stuck in random scenes to make a point of parodying other movies that didn't work with the plot. But again, this isn't unusual for a Scary Movie.

So overall, I really enjoyed this on the first watch, but once you know where it's going and what the jokes will be, it just doesn't really work. There's no re-watchability here, which is something that a few of the other Scary Movies definitely had.

5/10