Scary Movie

Published on August 9th, 2026

Well, I guess it was inevitable that Scary Movie would return in the form of a legacy sequel. After all, the original Scary Movie modeled itself heavily on Scream, and that franchise itself was revived with a legacy sequel just a few years ago. So, naturally, they have done what they did back in 2000: take the basic plot of that Scream movie and use it as the foundation for a joke-a-minute spoof.

Two friends find themselves caught up in a new wave of mayhem involving masked killers, monsters and supernatural creatures, while the people around them are picked off one by one. As the body count rises, they attempt to figure out who—or what—is behind the madness, all while stumbling through the usual horror-movie clichés that Scary Movie is more than happy to tear apart.

This 2026 Scary Movie is clearly modeled after the 2022 Scream, which I’m going to call Scream 5 from now on, with the Wayans brothers returning to the franchise they created after it was effectively taken away from them by the Weinstein brothers. Most of the original cast also return, and quite a few of the old jokes come along for the ride. Ray is still a closeted gay man, while Officer Doofy remains the same hopelessly hapless character we remember. Cindy is now largely modeled after Laurie Strode from the recent Halloween trilogy, while Brenda has been reinvented as a mother.

Like Scream 5, a new cast of teenagers is introduced, including Jack, a character who spends most of the movie telegraphing that he is the killer. There is also Jess, a transgender man played by actual transgender actor Benny Zielke. Interestingly, while the movie has no problem recycling the same old homophobic jokes it was making 25 years ago, it seems unwilling to make transgender characters the target of similar jokes. That genuinely surprised me. Scary Movie carefully follows the current trend of casting minority characters with actors from those same minority groups. From the people who brought us White Chicks, this feels less like progress and more like a sell-out.

The jokes themselves are fine, although, as is usually the case with these spoofs, there are far more misses than hits. A couple of completely unrelated cutaways stand out precisely because they aren’t bogged down by the main plot. One segment spoofs Longlegs, while another gives yet another member of the Jackson 5 the biopic treatment. Both are among the movie’s funniest moments, largely because they have nothing to do with the increasingly thin plot surrounding them.

It’s a nice return to the franchise, running partially on nostalgia, but of course it lacks the original Scary Movie‘s surprisingly funny take on the genre. The Wayans brothers’ return gives the movie some much-needed connection to the original, and there are enough decent jokes and familiar faces to make it worth a watch. But with most of the material feeling like a remix of jokes we’ve already seen, it never comes close to recapturing the anarchic energy and genuine surprise of the first movie. It’s a perfectly serviceable revival, but one that ultimately feels more like a trip down memory lane than a fresh new chapter.