‘Scary Movie 6’ Is A Box Office Hit in 2026, But How Does It Rank Against All The ‘Scary Movies’?

Some later-period Scary Movie alumni stuck around for this wheezy fifth installment: Former director David Zucker co-wrote the screenplay with his go-to gag man Pat Proft, while past cast members Charlie Sheen and Simon Rex return and several ensemble performers are back, all in new roles. (A little confusing, but it does contribute to the overall rep-company-sketch-comedy feel.) At the same time, Paranormal Activity provides a whole new franchise to parody and veteran comedy director Malcolm D. Lee is new to the director’s chair, which should give this sequel the requisite mix of the old and new. Instead, it feels like a direct-to-video installment, with Rex co-leading opposite High School Musical’s Ashley Tisdale and the filmmakers listlessly hybridizing a Paranormal Activity and the then-extremely-recent Mama, with Black Swan and, uh, Rise of the Planet of the Apes thrown in for good measure. At this point, the series seems to be chasing the super-cheap YouTube-like style of the Date Movie/Epic Movie/Disaster Movie spoofs from credited Scary Movie co-writers Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer. But at this point, even those movies were on the wane, and rather than returning to show everyone how it’s done, Scary Movie 5 struggles to even conjure up gags to take advantage of its intermittent found-footage format. Oh, but at least they left in the racism!

SNL alumni count: 2 (Molly Shannon, Darrell Hammond)

Faris and Hall’s temporary swan song for the series has its moments, mostly derived from throwing Faris into a recreation of The Grudge (though, as is often the case with trying to stay as current as possible with spoofs, it turns out that 20 years later, no one much thinks about the American version of The Grudge). Mostly, though, this second effort from David Zucker (who directed the first two Naked Gun movies and co-directed Airplane! and Top Secret! as part of the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker team) suffers from a focus on celebrity gimmicks and gossip over workable parody, let alone functional satire. In 2006, there probably wasn’t a horror movie more ripe for satire than the grimy, gory Saw series, but that material is largely relegated to this movie’s dopey cold open featuring Shaq and Dr. Phil. Most of what follows is a close parody of the 2005 War of the Worlds – and fair enough that it’s the most horror-like blockbuster Spielberg ever made, but it seems to be used here primarily as an excuse to have Craig Bierko do an extended Tom Cruise impression with the weak payoff of savaging his couch-jumping antics on Oprah.

SNL alumni count: 2 (Chris Elliott, Molly Shannon)

The original Scary Movie is certainly a simpler affair than its grab-bag sequels – almost to a fault, though, because rather than drawing on the full history of iconic slashers like Halloween or Nightmare on Elm Street, the movie’s entire frame of reference seems to be movies written by Kevin Williamson between the years 1996 and 2000. A surprising amount of the movie actually riffs on I Know What You Did Last Summer rather than the purported source material of Scream, which makes sense; Scream is already funny and self-aware, so there isn’t much to do with it besides do stupid “extreme” versions of its most famous scenes. In addition to discovering Anna Faris, the movie is most interesting when overlaying slasher clichés with the Black culture that has so often supported horror movies, even as the genre was often dominated by white performers. But director Keenen Ivory Wayans has a weakness for homophobic yuks — the Shawn Wayans character of the obviously gay guy who won’t admit he’s gay is particularly tedious — and truly gnarly mugging.

SNL alumni count: 1 (Cheri Oteri)

Give the Wayans some credit: They smartly pivoted away from slashers with this super-rushed sequel (released just a year after the original!) and instead employed a haunted-house framework, which offers more opportunities for straight-faced genre touchstones to travesty with zaniness.  But while there are plenty of nods to older horror movies, the movie uses the 1999 remake The Haunting as its Scream; even a year and change from its release, it must have been clear that former wasn’t exactly on the level of the latter. At least, that’s one possible explanation for the number of off-reservation spoof-whatever scenes that tackle genre classics like Save the Last Dance, Dude, Where’s My Car?, and some Nike commercial. Still: This movie gives Faris and Hall more to do (Hall’s deconstruction of a menacing skeleton is particularly funny), and it adds some eclectic supporting players in the form of Chris Elliott, David Cross, and Tim Curry… even if they’re not all used to the best of their abilities.

SNL alumni count: 1 (Chris Elliott)

This movie now feels somewhat notorious in the Scary Movie behind-the-scenes lore, for reasons referred to in the latest film: It’s where the Weinsteins wrested control of the franchise away from the Wayans family, who worked on the first two films, and handed it off to spoof veteran David Zucker. This coincided with a more serious, less meta turn in recent horror blockbusters, which pays dividends when it comes to Zucker sending up overfamiliar plot beats, narrative tropes, and even camera movements from movies like Signs and The Ring; though she’s expressed regret over sticking with the series without the Wayans, Anna Faris may give her best overall performance of the series here. For that matter, Charlie Sheen is admittedly pretty good doing a pratfall-heavy version of Mel Gibson’s character in Signs. Unfortunately, it’s still later-period Zucker, which means overreliance on amped-up cartoon slapstick, secondhand gags and casting (Sheen isn’t exactly a revelation after two Hot Shots! movies from Zucker’s buddy Jim Abrahams, and while it’s fun to see Leslie Nielsen as the president, it’s not his finest spoof work), and a scattershot approach to its pastiche seemingly influenced, ironically, by the earlier Scary Movie entries. Hence extended riffs on The Matrix, 8 Mile and a beer commercial. With Faris, Hall, Sheen, and Anthony Anderson on hand, along with cameos from Queen Latifah, Eddie Griffin, a young Kevin Hart, and George Carlin, among others, this is something of an all-star affair, so it makes sense that it represented a box office comeback for the series.  

SNL alumni count: 1 (Darrell Hammond)

The Wayans have returned the series they began back in 2000. Keenen Ivory Wayans doesn’t direct this time, ceding the chair to Michael Tiddes, who worked with co-wrier and co-star Marlon Wayans on the Haunted House spoofs some years ago. Just as important: Anna Faris and Regina Hall are back in leading roles, and there’s been more than enough big horror movies in the past 13 years to give the latest Scary Movie plenty of material, including spoofs of Sinners, Longlegs, Get Out, Ma, and various Scream shenanigans. The high spirits of everyone involved carry the movie for about half its running time, featuring some of the best sight gags, silly jokes, and self-referential asides of the series. Does it really sustain itself for the entire runtime? Not really. Does it still go back to the gay-panic well for lengthy scenes of Shawn Wayans driving that one bit of shtick into the ground? Oh, absolutely. But at this point, accepting the terrible and the lazy with the laugh-out-loud funny is all part of the Scary Movie tradition.

SNL alumni count: 4 (Kenan Thompson, Heidi Gardner, Cheri Oteri, Chris Elliott)