Scary Movie
You know what's scary? A satire of a satire.

Scary movie, indeed.

Last year, I attended a roundtable interview session with Ed Sanchez and Dan Myrick, the makers of The Blair Witch Project. About halfway through the meeting, one reporter leaned forward, smiled, and asked, "Do you think it's possible to make a horror movie after Scream? Isn't that kind of the last word on the genre?" This is generally the sort of question that makes me want to weep for my profession, but, in retrospect, I think she was actually going somewhere. She meant it, of course, in the sense that no horror movie could possibly be scary now that the self-referential Scream has illuminated all clichés. (Which were, you know, so subtly hidden beforehand.) But, in one way, her question holds up.

We see desperate people: Wayans in Scary Movie.

While Scream may not have changed the course of straight horror (Sixth Sense, Blair, etc), it did manage to invent a genre of its own -- the satirical, self-referential teen horror film -- that spawned many imitators, none of which came remotely near to equaling the quality of the original. In fact, they were so resoundingly lame that we are now greeted with what's ostensibly a satire of a satire, Scary Movie. Now this film, which spoofs everything from Scream to I Know What My Breasts Did Last Summer to, well, Scream 2, should really be the final word on the matter, but if this pattern continues, it certainly won't be. Scary Movie exists, after all, to mock a bunch of really bad flicks -- as did Scream. And Scary Movie is one of the worse movies to come along in quite some time. It's a satire that begs to be mocked itself.

Scary Movie is an odd combination of meticulous appeals to a target audience and utter carelessness. Directed by Keenen Ivory Wayans and written in part by brothers Marlon and Shawn, the film resembles less the hilarious I'm Gonna Git You Sucka or Don't Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood than a mini-marathon of the mercifully short-lived WB series The Wayans Brothers. After an amusing opening scene (Carmen Electra gets slaughtered, thus amusement), it falls downhill into profoundly unfunny jokes made worse by their calculated nature.

"My boyfriend's gonna kick your ass. He's big, and he plays basketball, and... oops, that was annulled, huh?"

Seemingly written as it was filmed, Scary Movie incorporates gags on The Matrix and Blair Witch, neither of which -- especially the latter -- come across as anything more than a tribute to short-attention spans. The characters are named Buffy, Brandy, Drew -- obvious references for obvious characters. More than that, the film's grotesque visual jokes -- a giant pair of distended testicles, a penis through someone's ear -- are not so much disgusting as they are boring. It's just so contrived -- you can sense the analysts over at Dimension musing over the grosses of There's Something About Mary, American Pie and South Park in every scene. The humor is also rather random, as if there was so little to work with in terms of parody that they just stuck in some gross visual gag to fill up time, to get attention -- to make money. While Scary Movie does occasionally have some really funny moments, the half-hearted tone of the film nearly cancels them out. It's a sad day when the highlight of any movie is a James Van Der Beek cameo.

A Blair Witch parody... who'da thunk it?

Worst of all, you can't help but compare nearly everything in Scary Movie to Scream, and, if anything, Scary Movie will make you realize what a truly great flick that is. Scream was sharp, clever, everything that Scary Movie isn't -- and most of all, it knew the genre it satirized. Watching Scary Movie, you get the feeling that the Wayanses would be better off making a straight-out, There's Something About Mary-style comedy than attempting to do anything with the horror genre. As it stands now, the film is an endless array of wasted opportunities -- opportunities, actually, that were already taken by Scream. That reporter at the Blair session should have asked whether Scream was the final word on horror parodies. The answer, unfortunately, would have been yes.

DROOL FACTOR: Oh, no. These are straight off the first-rung rejects from the Dawson's Creek casting call.

GROSS-OUT FACTOR: Nearly everything. More graphic body parts than I've ever seen in an R-rated movie. However, it's not so much gross as it is repetitive.

STRONG CHICK FACTOR: The film costars Carmen Electra and Shannon Elizabeth. You decide.

-- Sarah Kendzior

Scary Movie releases nationwide on July 7.

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