Even with its record-setting 16 Oscar nominations and universal acclaim, Sinners isn’t safe from the sarcastic crosshairs of the Scary Movie reboot—and neither is nearly every other culturally significant horror movie released in the 13 interim years since the genre-lampooning franchise’s last lackluster installment.
Director Ryan Coogler’s bloodsucking, Michael B. Jordan-led entry into the “elevated horror” category that’s exploded over the past decade is prominently parodied with a scene featuring three white interlopers attempting to infiltrate a Halloween party with “bad music and half-gay shit.” Jordan’s cowboy-cosplaying stand-in appears suddenly to deliver the punchline: “Why just half-gay?”
Ghostface, the main antagonist from both the original Scary Movie and the property it was parodying, Scream, returns in full force to be forcibly penetrated and inject a woman with a neon-yellow serum dubbed “The Stuff”—a joke at the expense of 2024’s boundary-pushing body horror The Substance. Get Out, the Terrifier and Megan films, and several other spoofs are also teased, as is a mall Santa-fied version of Saw‘s Jigsaw, who blesses children with severed body parts of all types, including reproductive.
Fans of the franchise will be pleased to see the original actors who portrayed the “core four” also return, including Anna Faris’s “final girl”-parodying Cindy Campbell (who now invokes the legacy survivor trope, a la Jamie Lee Curtis in the Halloween requel); Regina Hall’s immortal Brenda Meeks; Marlon Wayans’ perennially stoned Shorty Meeks; and Shawn Wayans’ jock-typifying Ray Wilkins. Most exciting of all, the Wayans brothers have returned to write and produce for the first time since 2001’s Scary Movie 2. A no-holds-barred approach is teased by both the trailer, which is set to Eminem’s controversy-championing “Without Me,” and the official logline from Paramount:
“Marlon Wayans (“Shorty”), Shawn Wayans (“Ray”), Anna Faris (“Cindy”), and Regina Hall (“Brenda”) reunite in Scary Movie alongside returning favorites and fresh faces to slash through reboots, remakes, requels, prequels, sequels, spin-offs, elevated horror, origin stories, anything with the word legacy in it, and every “final chapter” that absolutely isn’t final. Nothing is sacred. No trope survives. Every line gets crossed. The Wayans are back to cancel the Cancel Culture. “
Scary Movie hits theaters on June 12. Watch the official trailer below:
