Scary Movie Review

The setup is the Scream formula turned on itself: a new Ghostface attacks Cindy Campbell's teenage daughter, the legacy cast is dragged back in, and someone actually says the word rebootquel out loud. The Wayans brothers, absent since the second film in 2001, shot it in eight weeks at Tyler Perry Studios for thirty million dollars, then added gags about Sinners and Weapons in April. That is the method: it parodies whatever was in cinemas most recently.

Anna Faris and Regina Hall are still the reason to watch. Faris does more with a blank stare than the script gives her, and Hall, killed off in most of the earlier films, plays Brenda's return with real comic aggression. The twist, which unmasks Anthony Anderson and Shaquille O'Neal killing out of resentment at having been written out of the franchise, is the one stretch with a point of view.

Critics were not persuaded: 23 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, 38 on Metacritic, a C plus CinemaScore. Owen Gleiberman thought the jokes were asserted rather than delighted in. It still took 55 million dollars on the opening weekend, the biggest in the series, and 232 million worldwide against a 30 million dollar budget. A hit, and a tired one.