Scary Movie
USA 2000
Reviewed by Kim Newman
Synopsis
Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.
US, the present. Drew Decker, a senior at B.A. Corpse High School, is pestered by a masked phone prankster who then kills her. The killer's next target is teenager Cindy Campbell, already traumatised because she and her friends - boyfriend Bobby, couple Ray and Brenda, Greg and Buffy - caused the death of a stranger last Halloween. Television reporter Gail Hailstorm arrives and flirts with Officer Doofy to get the inside scoop on the case.
When Cindy survives an encounter with the stalker, Bobby is arrested but released once the killer is seen elsewhere. The killer murders Greg, Buffy, Brenda, Gail and Ray. Cindy surrenders her virginity to Bobby. Bobby, apparently attacked by the slasher, is revealed to be a killer himself, with his secret lover Ray, who turns out to be alive and is embittered because of the cancellation of the Wayans Brothers' television show. The killers have also abducted Mr Campbell, Cindy's drug-dealing father, whom they plan to murder. However, the masked murderer shows up and kills Bobby and Ray before engaging in a martial-arts fight with Cindy. As the police interrogate Cindy, she realises that the clues point to Officer Doofy, who walks away, shedding his disguise. As Cindy rants at the unfairness of it all, she is run over by a car.
Review
And so cycles turn inevitably to spoof. In the late 40s, a decade and a half after Universal made a name for itself with a string of horror movies, Abbott and Costello met the studio's pantheon of movie monsters. Then, in the early 80s, only a few years after the teen slasher genre exploded with Halloween (1978) and Friday the 13th (1980), a clutch of Airplane!-style skits came along: from Student Bodies to Saturday the 14th. Arriving barely months after the alleged conclusion of the Scream series, which it parodies, and far out-grossing its inspiration, Scary Movie may well be the most commercially successful spoof yet, as well as the quickest off the mark. Indeed, Scary Movie has been such an immediate hit that it must have clicked more with mainstream audiences who appreciate the Farrelly Brothers - whose style of gross-out humour is in evidence throughout - than with the sizeable but cult crowd who saw Scream.
A major problem with Scary Movie is that it seems to have been made by people who didn't especially care for Scream, which was humorously intended in the first place. Director Keenen Ivory Wayans - assisted here by his brothers Shawn and Marlon as co-writers and performers - has previously ventured into parody with the blaxploitation spoof I'm Gonna Git You Sucka!. The Wayans' half of the script was developed in two versions, one hewing close to the whitebread conventions of the slasher movie and the other with mostly black characters. In the event, you're left feeling that they would have been happier filming the second script - there are a couple of wry race jokes, notably the cut from the announcement "white woman in trouble" to the arrival of hordes of police cars - but have been forced to stick with the first.
After the opening riff on the Drew Barrymore killing from Scream, Scary Movie's model provides rather thin material for skitting. Some of the parody is so abstruse as to be subliminal: echoing Scream's casting of Henry Winkler, who starred in Happy Days, as the school principal, this casts David L. Lander from the Happy Days spin-off Laverne and Shirley in a similar role. Scenes taken from Scream - Buffy's sarcastic confrontation with the killer, for instance - are played more broadly than in the original, but actually aren't as funny.
Wayans is on safer ground lampooning I Know What You Did Last Summer, a more po-faced slasher than Scream, and screws a few laughs out of the hit-and-run victim who keeps insisting he's all right as the teens argue about disposing of his corpse. Otherwise, Scary Movie has to yank in bits from other films not so much for parodic effect as for the shock of recognition, cueing limp variations on sequences from The Blair Witch Project and The Matrix (Cindy riverdancing in mid-air).
The air of desperation is emphasised by the insistence on padding out horror-movie gags with crude Farrelly-style humour: a hairy-chinned gym mistress with dangling testicles, a penis-through-the-brain murder that mimics a moment in Scream 2 and an ejaculation that splatters Cindy against the ceiling in a rare nod to pre-Scream horror (A Nightmare on Elm Street). This sort of material initially gets big, shocked laughs but soon wears thin, especially without the Farrellys' streak of sentiment. Indeed, it hardly seems all that daring in a summer that finds a college dean being sodomised by a giant hamster in a PG-12 movie (The Nutty Professor II). A rare instance of real humour is the murder of Brenda at the hands of an audience for whom she has ruined Shakespeare in Love by talking loudly - and even that's similar to a gag in Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2.
Credits
- Director
- Keenen Ivory Wayans
- Producers
- Eric L. Gold
- Lee R. Mayes
- Screenplay
- Shawn Wayans
- Marlon Wayans
- Buddy Johnson
- Phil Beauman
- Jason Friedberg
- Aaron Seltzer
- Director of Photography
- Francis Kenny
- Editor
- Mark Helfrich
- Production Designer
- Robb Wilson King
- Music/Music Conductor
- David Kitay
- ©Miramax Film Corp.
- Production Companies
- Miramax International/ Dimension Films present a Wayans Bros. Entertainment
- Gold-Miller, Brad Grey Pictures
- Executive Producers
- Brad Grey
- Peter Safran
- Bo Zenga
- Bob Weinstein
- Harvey Weinstein
- Cary Granat
- Peter Schwerin
- Co-producer
- Lisa Suzanne Blum
- Associate Producer
- Robb Wilson King
- Executive in Charge of Production
- Dimension Films:
- Kevin Hyman
- Production Co-ordinator
- Sandra Palmer
- Unit Production Managers
- Lee R. Mayes
- Fran Rosati
- Unit Manager
- Janice Frome
- Location Manager
- Edmund Nesling
- Post-production Supervisor
- Ninon Tantet
- 2nd Unit Director
- J.J. Makaro
- Assistant Directors
- Michael Waxman
- Susan Derkson
- Jeff Mosuk
- Script Supervisor
- Madeleine Duff
- Casting
- Mary Vernieu
- Anne McCarthy
- Christine Sheaks
- Associates:
- Freddy Luiz
- Alex Newman
- Canada:
- Blair Law
- LA Associate:
- John Barba
- ADR Voices:
- Barbara Harris
- Loop Troop
- Camera Operators
- David Crone
- Paul Burkett
- Sandy McCallum
- Bob Ennis
- Roberto Contreras
- Gary Armstrong
- Steadicam Operators
- David Crone
- Jim van Dijk
- Visual Effects Supervisor
- Brian Jennings
- Digital Visual Effects
- Threshold Digital Research Labs in association with
- IBM Corporation
- Additional Visual Effects
- DigiScope
- Special Effects Co-ordinator
- Gary Paller
- Graphics Illustrator
- Paolo Venturi
- Sign Writer
- Linda Marie Bishop
- Additional Editor
- Chris Jackson
- Art Director
- Lawrence F. Pevec
- Set Decorator
- Louise Roper
- Illustrator
- Marcus Endean
- Scenic Artist
- John B. Keys
- Costume Designer
- Darryle Johnson
- Costume Supervisor
- Michelle Baines
- Key Make-up Artist
- Stan Edmonds
- Prosthetic & Animatronic Effects Design/Creation
- Flesh & Fantasy Inc.
- Key Hairstylist
- Angelina P. Cameron
- Hairstylist
- Linda Villalobos
- Main Title
- Howard Anderson
- End Title/Optical
- Custom Film Effects
- Orchestrations
- Don Nemitz
- Music Supervisor
- Michael Dilbeck
- Music Executive for TVT Records
- Patricia Joseph
- Miramax Executive in Charge of Music
- Randy Spendlove
- Supervising Music Editor
- Charles Martin Inouye
- Music Scoring Mixer
- Danny Wallin
- Music Consultant
- Bryan Bonwell
- Soundtrack
- "I Don't Want to Wait" - Paula Cole; "What What" - Public Enemy; "The Only Way to Be" - Save Ferris; "Punk Song #2" - Silverchair; "It's Raining Men" - Robert Barry and Monet; "Everybody Wants You" - The Unband; "Roll 'Em Phat" - Tony Banks; "Superfly" - Bender; "I Want Cha" - Black Eyed Peas; "All about You" - Tupac Shakur featuring Top Dogg, Nate Dogg, Dru Down; "My Bad" - Oleander; "Jump Up (If You Feel Alright)" - Da Beat Bros.; "Show Me Now" - Jodie Wilson, Lindy Robbins, Marsha Malamet; "Stay" - Radford; "Too Cool for School" - Fountains of Wayne; "I'm the Killer" - Lifelong featuring Incident; "Scary Movies" - Bad Meets Evil featuring Eminem and Royce 5'9"; "The Inevitable Return of the Great White Hope" - Blood Hound Gang; "Feel Me" - Rock, Rah Digga, Rampage; "Visit to Florida"
- Sound Supervision/Design
- Sandy Berman
- Production Sound Mixer
- Richard D. Lightstone
- Re-recording Mixers
- Andy D'Addario
- Tim Chau
- Recordist
- Steve Kohler
- Supervising Sound Editor
- John Leveque
- Dialogue Editors
- Bruce D. Fortune
- Kim Secrist
- Kimberly Lowe Voight
- Mildred Iatrou Morgan
- Richard E. Yawn
- Additional Sound Effects Recording
- Gary Blufer
- Sound Effects Co-ordinator
- John Michael Fanaris
- Sound Effects Editors
- Aaron D. Weisblatt
- Steve Mann
- Anthony R. Milch
- ADR
- Supervising Editor:
- Lee Lemont
- Editor:
- Becky Sullivan
- Foley
- Artists:
- Sarah Jacobs
- Robin Harlan
- Supervising Editor:
- Bob Beher
- Editors:
- Shawn Sykora
- Roland N. Thai
- Stunt Co-ordinator
- J.J. Makaro
- Fight Co-ordinator
- Dean Choe
- Animals
- Creative Animal Talent
- Animal Handlers
- Mark Wiener-Dumas
- Steve Woodley
- Film Extract
- Shakespeare in Love (1998)
- Cast
- Jon Abrahams
- Bobby
- Carmen Electra
- Drew Decker
- Shannon Elizabeth
- Buffy
- Anna Faris
- Cindy Campbell
- Kurt Fuller
- sheriff
- Regina Hall
- Brenda
- Lochlyn Munro
- Greg
- Cheri Oteri
- Gail Hailstorm
- Dave Sheridan
- Officer Doofy
- Marlon Wayans
- Shorty
- Shawn Wayans
- Ray
- Frank B. Moore
- not Drew's boyfriend
- Giacomo Baessato
- Kyle Graham
- Leanne Santos
- trick or treaters
- Mark McConchie
- Drew's dad
- Karen Kruper
- Drew's mom
- Anna Faris
- Cindy
- Rick Ducommun
- Cindy's dad
- Lloyd Berry
- homeless man
- Matthew Paxman
- annoying guy
- Chris Robson
- KOMQ reporter
- Susan Shears
- female reporter
- Peter Bryant
- black TV reporter
- Andrea Nemeth
- Heather
- Craig Brunanski
- road victim
- Dan Joffre
- cameraman Kenny
- Kelly Coffield
- teacher
- David L. Lander
- Principal Squiggy
- Reg Tupper
- beauty pageant MC
- Tanja Reichert
- Miss Congeniality
- Kendall Saunders
- Miss Thing
- D.M. Babe Dolan
- grandma
- David Neale
- Nels Lennarson
- policemen
- Nicola Crosbie
- Ian Bliss
- reporters
- Chris Wilding
- Shorty's roommate
- Trevor Roberts
- Dookie
- Glynis Davies
- Buffy's mom
- Jayne Trcka
- Miss Mann
- Peter Hanlon
- suicidal teacher
- Ted Cole
- older man in theatre
- Doreen Ramus
- old lady in theatre
- Lee R. Mayes
- Amistad II captain
- Keenen Ivory Wayans
- slave
- Mark Hoeppner
- whipmaster/slavemaster
- Jessica Van Der Veen
- woman in theatre
- Jim Shepard
- young man in theatre
- Marissa Jaret Winokur
- garage victim
- Dexter Bell
- Shorty's friend
- Ted Gill
- store clerk
- [uncredited]
- James Van Der Beek
- Dawson Leery
- Certificate
- 18
- Distributor
- Buena Vista International (UK)
- 7,941 feet
- 88 minutes 14 seconds
- Dolby Digital/DTS/SDDS
- Colour by
- DeLuxe
- 2.35:1 [Super 35]