The new Scary Movie, directed by Mike Tiddes and fronted by Marlon Wayans, crawls from its shallow grave with a cracked grin and a determination to prove the franchise still has a pulse. The film opens with a familiar ritual: a teenager, a screen glowing in the dark, a masked killer who refuses to stay buried. The setup is worn, but the film treats its own decay as part of the joke, turning the creak of its bones into a kind of rhythm. The result is a return that feels both dutiful and faintly triumphant, even when the seams show.
The faux‑gothic mood suits this entry. The film drapes itself in cobwebs and theatrical gloom, then undercuts every shadow with a punchline. Tiddes leans into the franchise’s history of chaos, but he also lets the rot show. The jokes about pronouns and safe spaces land with a thud, not because they offend, but because they feel embalmed. The film wants to be transgressive, yet its rebellion is so tame it dissolves on contact. Still, the gothic framing gives the comedy a cracked cathedral to echo in, and sometimes the echo is enough.
The plot—Sara Campbell, her sister Tuesday, and their estranged mother Cindy confronting a new Ghostface—moves with the shambling gait of a resurrected corpse. But the film’s best moments come when it stops pretending the story matters and leans into the delirium of its ensemble. Regina Hall’s Brenda remains the franchise’s most reliable force of nature, her every entrance a small exorcism of the film’s weaker instincts. Marlon Wayans, returning as Shorty, brings a manic energy that keeps the film from sinking into its own swamp.
The film’s attempt to weave January 6th into Doofy Gilmore’s backstory is a choice that borders on necromancy. It is absurd, tasteless, and strangely committed, which makes it one of the few risks that pays off. The film’s parade of cameos—Anthony Anderson, Shaquille O’Neal, Kai Cenat—adds to the carnival atmosphere. These appearances don’t deepen the film, but they do thicken its stew of nonsense, which is part of the franchise’s charm. The gothic tone turns these intrusions into hauntings, visitors drifting through a crumbling funhouse.
Where the film falters is in its reliance on reference-as-punchline. The meta humor has curdled. The film stacks callbacks, parodies, and winks until the structure buckles. The gothic trappings can’t disguise the thinness of the material, and the pacing often resembles a scroll through discarded sketches. Yet even in its weakest stretches, the film maintains a shambling vitality. It knows it is undead, and it embraces the condition.
The final act, with its cascade of Ghostface reveals—Jack and Val, then Anthony Anderson and Shaq, then Shorty and Ray—turns the film into a ritual sacrifice of narrative coherence. But the chaos has a certain grandeur. The film becomes a cathedral of nonsense, every twist another cracked gargoyle leering from the rafters. Cindy and Brenda’s survival feels earned, not because the story supports it, but because the franchise bends around them.
The ending, in which Sara and Tuesday are tied up and left to burn so the legacy characters can protect their throne, is the film’s sharpest stroke. It is a confession: the franchise cannot let go of its past, even when it pretends to pass the torch. The faux‑gothic tone turns this into a darkly comic benediction. The old guard survives not through heroism, but through pettiness and spite, which feels truer to the franchise than any attempt at reinvention.
Despite its missteps, the film has a pulse. It may be faint, but it beats. The gothic mood gives the comedy a new texture, and the returning cast brings enough energy to keep the corpse animated. The film is uneven, often lazy, occasionally inspired, and unmistakably itself. In a landscape where horror and comedy both strain for relevance, Scary Movie VI stands as a cracked monument to the pleasures of low ambition executed with high spirit.
The franchise may never regain its early‑aughts power, but this entry proves it can still stagger forward with a grin. It is a mess, but a mess with personality, and in the current horror‑comedy climate, that counts for something. The film’s flaws are legion, but its willingness to embrace its own decay gives it a strange, undead charm.
LETTER GRADE: B.
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