Scary Movie (2000) Review // The Meeks Are Where It’s At

I skipped Scary Movie when it hit theaters and video rental stores. By 2000, I realized most horror comedies were geared toward frat boys. Meaning there would be a bunch of dick jokes and stereotypes that I wouldn’t have a good time with. Luckily, things have shifted, and more filmmakers who understand what that subgenre should be are getting to helm them now. So we get fun, smart, and inoffensive films worth talking about. However, in 2000, even the lure of the Wayans Dynasty wasn’t enough to make me watch this when it came out. Which is why I volunteered as tribute to watch and review the entire franchise ahead of the sixth installment. 

How Scary Is It Tho?

Teens dispose of a person they accidentally killed and find themselves terrorized by a masked serial killer a year later. Scary Movie has a Scream sun and an I Know What You Did Last Summer rising. This explains why our final girl, Cindy Campbell (Anna Faris), is a mix of Sidney Prescott and Julie James. She gets to play in an over-the-top version of both of those worlds as viewers watch a very familiar story unfold. However, unlike the movies starring the other final girls, this one isn’t really about her. She’s mostly there to set up the next gag and be the butt of jokes. While she does what she can, there is sadly not enough of her to grab onto to make her interesting. In a sea of one-note characters, she gets one and a half notes just because of the bonus screen time.

Did Scary Movie Prove Me Wrong?

While Scary Movie isn’t my brand of humor, it’s hard to deny that the properties being parodied in the film weren’t studied. That being said, it falls prey to the horror comedy pitfall of beating unfunny jokes to death. I was never going to find the character of Doofy Gilmore (Dave Sheridan) funny because it’s the kind of offensive humor that never lands with me. Disability jokes have always seemed cruel and makes wonder what the person writing them found funny about the disability. It’s the kind of frat humor that is annoying and, honestly, lazy. The exact same could be said for Ray Wilkins (Shawn Wayans) and the repeated gay jokes.

I get that parodies often feel like people are just throwing spaghetti at a wall and hoping something sticks. However, giving every character one thing to play for the bulk of a film, especially when it’s steeped in insulting or harmful rhetoric, is a choice. I am assuming the people returning for the new Scary Movie are no longer here for jokes that are beneath them. Especially in this current climate, where most of the personalities people would punch down on are fighting for rights in a dystopian America.

However…

On the surface, Scary Movie is a mid parody of Scream. However, the Keenen Ivory Wayans-helmed movie has strays for days. It also takes stabs at many popular horror films of the time and late teen culture in general. There are references to WB shows Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Dawson’s Creek. There are also nods to late 90s horror like The Blair Witch Project, and The Sixth Sense. These side streets are where the film gets interesting. It distracts from all of the things not working and asks us to look at how white 1990s media was. It also asks us to imagine a world where Black people were invited into these idealized white suburban worlds, as the perceived stereotypes the WB and most horror movies projected onto us.

In this light, Shorty Meeks (Marlon Wayans), being a stoner on side adventures, works. Wayans has a lot of fun in this role and almost got a couple of chuckles out of me just because of the commitment and absurdity of this character. This also gives Brenda Meeks (Regina Hall) so many fascinating layers. It especially gives her scene as the loud Black woman in the theater more texture. These old stereotypes being poked at are a good thing because these ideas are what white people who never leave their zip code fear. This is the Black person Fox News has made up and projected onto all of us because they are simply not safe enough to be close to any Black people. 

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The Meeks siblings were as much of a highlight as you could get from this first Scary Movie. That’s not to say others didn’t do what they could with what they were given. It’s just hard to not have fun with Hall. She’s amazing even if the movie felt like it was trying too hard the entire runtime. It’s also hard to ignore that her and Marlon Wayans’ characters have something underneath the surface that the film never fully addresses. That’s mostly visible due to them bringing it so close to the surface, though, as the script does not want to be as smart as it could be. So, while Scary Movie doesn’t work as a film (for me), it does do a couple of cool things that make me get why people keep returning to it.