SCARY MOVIE

July 3 – 8

Fri July 3 – 3:30 & 7:00 pm
Sat July 4 – 7:00 pm
Sun July 5 – 1:30 & 7:00 pm
Mon July 6– 7:00 pm
Tues July 7 – 7:00 pm
Wed July 8 – 3:30 pm – LAST SHOW

Rated 14A – 1hr 36min
Comedy / Horror

More than a quarter-century after the big and dumb (and lucrative) laughs of the first “Scary Movie” and 14 years after the dreadfully unfunny “Scary Movie V” seemed to put a stake in the heart of the franchise, the Wayans creative team regains control of the jokefest. You’ll be grateful for the relatively zippy 96-minute running time for Scary Movie 6.0. It was a kick to see the original “Core Four” of Regina King, Anna Faris, Marlon Wayans, and Shawn Wayans reprise their signature roles, and the opening sequence features an award-wielding Teyana Taylor as a heightened and hilarious version of herself.

Just as the first Scary Movie built its framework on a mashup of the original Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer and then peppered in a myriad of references to other films, the 2026 Scary Movie is built on the framework of the so-called “requel” films in the Scream series—with room for jokes about The Substance, The Matrix, Smile, M3gan, Final Destination, The Terrifier, Michael, and on and on.

Raunchy humor abounds, and the entire ensemble, including the newcomers, are comedic gamers who go all-in no matter how ridiculous the premise, but the attempts at edgy commentary, e.g., a visual gag about the Epstein files, are neither provocative nor funny. I did laugh at one bit about a group of passengers on a train turning violent over being lectured about using the proper pronouns, and the Kenan Thompson-led jab at “Michael” played like a moderately successful “SNL” sketch. You’ll love the brutal, ludicrous final twist, which matched the opening scene for bold humour.

So the weird thing is, this new Scary Movie is probably the funniest one, at least since the original. It’s been thirteen years since Scary Movie 5, which means there’s a huge backlog of horror movies to lampoon. Scary Movie 6 mostly riffs on the “requel” trend, where overdue sequels act as a brand new chapter and quasi-remake all at once. David Gordon Green’s Halloween and Tyler Gillett and Matt Bettinelli-Olpin’s Scream are the parody’s primary targets, and like those films, Scary Movie is about the same old protagonists teaming up with new, younger heroes to fight the same old villain.

For all the expected (if not all that pointed) mockery of legacy sequels, there is a certain comfort and cheer in seeing this cast back together again in pursuit of dumb laughs, even if the earlier films weren’t especially good either. The Wayans Brothers and the rest of the cast clearly had a ton of fun reuniting to resurrect the franchise; that comes through on screen, as does their love of these characters.