Scary Movie (2000)
By the late 1990s, the slasher genre had made a full commercial comeback. Wes Craven's Scream (1996) had revived interest in masked killers and self-aware horror, and the wave that followed, from I Know What You Did Last Summer to Urban Legend, kept the formula ticking over nicely at the box office. It was, in other words, ripe for someone to come along and take the mick. That someone turned out to be the Wayans family, who had already proven their instinct for genre-aware comedy through In Living Color on television. Scary Movie arrived in the summer of 2000 with a tagline that promised "no mercy, no shame, no sequel" (a promise it singularly failed to keep, spawning four follow-ups and a minor cottage industry of imitators), and it hit American cinemas like a custard pie to the face. It was crude, fast, and not remotely interested in your sensibilities.
Keenen Ivory Wayans had previously directed I'm Gonna Git You Sucka (1988), a similarly affectionate but irreverent send-up of Blaxploitation films, so the territory of genre parody was familiar ground for him. Here he was working from a script credited to Shawn and Marlon Wayans alongside Buddy Johnson, Phil Beauman, Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer (the latter two would go on to produce a string of far less fondly remembered spoofs). The film was produced through a combination of Dimension Films, the Weinstein-era label that had also distributed the Scream films it was now cheerfully lampooning, and the Wayans Bros. Entertainment banner. The budget was a fairly modest $19 million, which makes its $278 million worldwide gross one of the more eyebrow-raising commercial stories of that year. For a point of comparison with other films from that same moment, you might also enjoy Macca's look at Father and Daughter and The Heart of the World, two very different 2000 releases that show just how wide the cinematic spectrum was that year.
The cast is a mix of the familiar and the freshly launched. Anna Faris, then largely unknown outside television, takes the central role of Cindy Campbell, a clear riff on the archetypal horror "final girl." It was a breakout performance in every sense, requiring her to play both the straight woman and the punchline simultaneously, often within the same scene. Alongside her, Shawn and Marlon Wayans bring the kind of broad, physical energy the film demands, and Regina Hall, also making an early impression here, commits fully to a supporting turn that gives her surprisingly little to work with on paper but a lot of room to improvise in spirit. Jon Abrahams rounds out the principal ensemble as a recognisable type, the slightly dim but well-meaning teen whose main function is to misread every situation catastrophically. The performances are, fairly uniformly, calibrated to the material: loud, physical, and polished but unremarkable by any conventional yardstick.
There is a very specific, unapologetically loud energy to the comedy of the early 2000s, and Keenen Ivory Wayans’s 2000 spoof Scary Movie kicks the door off its hinges right from the opening frames.
Going back to this film now, it’s easy to dismiss it as just a relic of Y2K crassness. But if you actually look past the endless bodily fluids and juvenile gags, it operates as a surprisingly perfect, razor-sharp critique of the late-90s slasher boom it’s mocking. It’s silly, it’s deeply irreverent, and it completely dismantles the tired tropes of the horror genre with an absolute sledgehammer.
When the jokes land, they absolutely hit the mark, and there are plenty of moments that are genuinely laugh-out-loud funny. Anna Faris, in her breakout role as the final girl Cindy, anchors the chaos with a cracking blend of genuine terror and deadpan sarcasm, while Shawn and Marlon Wayans bring a manic, hyperactive energy to their supporting turns. The film doesn't just throw random jokes at the wall; it actually understands the mechanics of the movies it’s sending up, twisting the suspenseful, moody scenes of its targets into absolute absurdity. It’s a bit of a mess narratively, but the sheer commitment to the bit carries it through.
What really seals the vibe, however, is the soundtrack. It places the film exactly where it needs to be in the cultural zeitgeist, pumping out the late-90s and early-00s pop and rap tracks that make the whole experience feel like a brilliant, chaotic time capsule. It’s undeniably crass, and I wouldn't dare call it "great" cinema, or even "really good" by traditional critical standards. But it completely spawned an entire genre of parody movies that followed in its wake (for better or worse), proving its massive, lasting impact on the comedy landscape, even if the imitators rarely captured the same magic.
It’s just a genuinely fun time at the cinema that asks absolutely nothing of you except to sit back and endure the silliness. I know it’s not a cinematic triumph, and the humour is about as subtle as a brick to the face, but I genuinely challenge you to watch it and not crack a smile at least once. Wayans delivered a wildly entertaining, unpretentious spoof that perfectly captured the mood of its era, making it a highly watchable, thoroughly enjoyable ride.
Scary Movie sits at an interesting junction in comedy history, the point at which studio parody shifted from the relatively gentle, Mel Brooks-influenced tradition toward something rawer and more disposable. Whether that shift was a good thing is a fair debate, and Macca's review above does a reasonable job of holding both sides of it in tension at once. What the film unquestionably did was prove there was a large audience for this kind of broad, knowing comedy aimed squarely at genre fans with a short attention span and a high tolerance for gross-out gags. The imitators that came after it were, on the whole, a good deal worse, which perhaps tells you something about how much craft was actually at work here beneath the surface chaos. It is, when all is said and done, a film that set out to make you laugh and mostly managed it. Sometimes that really is enough.
Rating: ★★★ | Year: 2000 | Watched: 2026-07-20
Trailer
▶ Watch the official trailer for Scary Movie (2000) on YouTube
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