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Making a good parody movie isn't easy. Some have said you have to have affection for what you're sending up: it helps, but deep knowledge is at least as important.
Being funny, obviously, is paramount, and the gags tend to fly fast and furious, but the best examples tend to have a decent story and characters on which to hang the visual and verbal jokes, the more the merrier. And really specific contemporary references can date badly.
The parody movie has had a few phases and many entries. From the 1970s, Mel Brooks spoofed, among other things, Westerns (Blazing Saddles), horror movies (Young Frankenstein) and Alfred Hitchcock movies (High Anxiety). Moving into the next decade, Zucker brothers and Jim Abrahams made the disaster spoof Flying High! (original US title Airplane!) and the Naked Gun cop movies.
We'll skip over some of the history, including painfully unfunny efforts like Epic Movie (one of the worst experiences I've ever had in a cinema and evidence that there's an art to the parody).
The Wayans brothers gave us the first two Scary Movie movies (2001 and 2002). The history of the Scary Movie franchise is complicated: suffice it to say this is the sixth entry, the first in 13 years, and the first controlled by the Wayans since 2002. It's also something of a "rebootqel" or "requel" or whatever you want to call it, mostly following on from the first two movies.
The 2026 Scary Movie, like later entries in the Halloween and Scream series, uses the same title as the original, an annoying and pointless conceit.
Many years after their first encounter with Ghostface, the Core Four are back. Shorty (Marlon Wayans), Ray (Shawn Wayans), Cindy (Anna Faris) and Brenda (Regina Hall, a good sport for returning after her turn in the Oscar-winning One Battle After Another) are once again under threat from the killer, whoever he/she/they may be.
When young Tuesday (Savannah Lee Nassif) gets attacked by Ghostface, her sister Sara (Olivia Rose Keegan) and Sara's boyfriend Jack (Cameron Scott Roberts) visit the girls' survivalist mother, Cindy Campbell (Anna Faris) to ask for help. The later Halloween and Scream entries form much of the basic storyline, but there are many, many, many other references, quotes, characters, and cameos - some flash by in the background (keep your eyes open), others are more prominent and some are for the truly au courant.
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To list them all is impossible but among the ones I got are Get Out, Smile, Longlegs, Weapons, I Know What You Did Last Summer, M3gan, Final Destination and Sinners.
It's not all horror, either - there's a Michael biopic parody with an appearance by Saturday Night Live's Kenan Thompson, a KPop Demon Hunters animated bit, and John Wick.
And recent and current events and trends are also grist for the mill - live streamers, ICE, #MeToo. There are satirical jabs and lots of fourth-wall breaking, along with a lot of political incorrectness (the "n" word and trans and gay jokes abound), and a startlingly graphic sex scene. Consider yourself warned.
There are some references that I know went over my head, perhaps because they're aimed at the American domestic audience, especially, understandably, the African-American portion.
The Wayans - four of whom are credited with the script - seem to know what people want, and give it to them. Also given script credit is Rick Alvarez, whose previous films include the spoof A Haunted House, another movie made with the Wayans involvement and directed by Michael Tiddes, who called the shots here, too.
This isn't always sophisticated and is seldom subtle but it's fun if you are on the right comedy wavelength. The Wayans want to give people a good time. There are a couple of funny mid-credits scenes to wait for, too.
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