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Scary Movie

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This article is about the spoof horror film. For the genre, see horror film. For the film franchise, see Scary Movie (film series).
Scary Movie
Theatrical release poster
Directed byKeenen Ivory Wayans
Written byShawn Wayans
Marlon Wayans
Buddy Johnson
Phil Beauman
Jason Friedberg
Aaron Seltzer
Produced byEric L. Gold
Lee R. Mayes
StarringAnna Faris
Regina Hall
Marlon Wayans
Shawn Wayans
Jon Abrahams
Shannon Elizabeth
Lochlyn Munro
Carmen Electra
Cheri Oteri
Dave Sheridan
Kurt Fuller
Carmen Electra
CinematographyFrancis Kenny
Edited byMark Helfrich
Music byDavid Kitay
Production
companies
Dimension Films
Wayans Bros. Entertainment
Gold/Miller Productions
Brad Grey Pictures
Distributed byMiramax Films
Release date
  • July 7, 2000 (2000-07-07)
Running time
90 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$19 million
Box office$278 million

Scary Movie is a 2000 horror comedy spoof film directed by Keenen Ivory Wayans. It is an American dark comedy that heavily parodies the horror, slasher, and mystery genres. Several mid- and late-'90s films and TV shows are spoofed, especially Scream, along with I Know What You Did Last Summer, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Sixth Sense, The Usual Suspects, The Matrix, The Blair Witch Project, and Dawson's Creek.

The tagline reads "No mercy. No shame. No sequel.", the last reference being an ironic nod towards the tendency of popular horror movies becoming cash cow franchises. 2001 saw the release of Scary Movie 2, with the appropriate tagline "We lied". Later video covers of the first film frequently drop the tagline's third statement. The film was originally titled "Last Summer I Screamed Because Halloween Fell on Friday the 13th". Scary Movie was followed by four more sequels Scary Movie 2 (2001), Scary Movie 3 (2003), Scary Movie 4 (2006) and Scary Movie 5 (2013).[1] Its title serves as a homage to the production title of Scream, which was also released through Dimension Films.

Plot

An 18-year-old girl named Drew Decker (Carmen Electra) receives a threatening phone call while home alone one night. Drew is chased outside by Ghostface, who wounds her with a stab to the breast that removes her implant. She is hit by a vehicle driven by her father, who was distracted by oral sex from his wife, and is then killed by Ghostface.

The next morning, Cindy Campbell (Anna Faris) meets up with her boyfriend Bobby Prinze (Jon Abrahams) and her friends, Brenda Meeks (Regina Hall), Ray Wilkins (Shawn Wayans), Greg Phillipe (Lochlyn Munro), and Buffy Gilmore (Shannon Elizabeth). Various news teams, including hack reporter Gail Hailstorm (Cheri Oteri), converge on the school in the wake of Drew's death. Gail hooks up with Buffy's mentally disabled brother Doofy (Dave Sheridan) hoping to milk the facts out of him.

While Cindy is in class, she receives a note reading: "I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST HALLOWEEN!" She then realizes that Drew was murdered exactly one year after she and her friends accidentally killed a man during a wild car ride. The next day a series of increasingly bizarre events take place. Various members of the group receive threatening notes from Ghostface and are rapidly dispatched.

Greg is killed by Ghostface in plain view during Buffy's beauty pageant, with the audience mistaking Buffy's screams as being part of her act. Buffy, high on the success brought along by her win, ignores Cindy's warnings about the killer and does not realize she is being killed as it happens, even after she is decapitated (and the killer tosses her head in a Lost and Found bin, though her head keeps talking). Ray and Brenda go to a showing of Shakespeare In Love, where Ray is stabbed in the ear through a bathroom stall. Ghostface then goes after Brenda. Unfortunately, angry movie patrons, fed up with Brenda's rude behavior during the movie, kill her before Ghostface can.

Meanwhile, Cindy throws a house party, hoping for safety in numbers. During the party, Bobby and Cindy go upstairs and they have sex, no longer making Cindy a virgin (though Bobby ejaculates waterfall proportions of semen inside of Cindy, that blast her up and sticks her to the ceiling). Ghostface unexpectedly appears and stabs Bobby, before disappearing quickly. Cindy gets a gun from a drawer near the entrance, Bobby follows and she tends to his wounds. Brenda's stoner brother Shorty (Marlon Wayans) comes up from the basement and informs them that the killer has murdered everybody in the house.

Bobby takes the gun and shoots Shorty, revealing that his wound was an elaborate ruse. Ray arrives on the scene, alive; he and Bobby announce their plan to Cindy to kill her and her father (despite the fact that they are not actually the killers). Ray and Bobby also plan to make themselves look like heroes by giving each other stab wounds to indicate they fought back, but the plan backfires when Ray stabs Bobby repeatedly and nearly kills him, furious because his favorite show, The Wayans Bros., has been cancelled. Ghostface abruptly arrives and attacks Cindy during a fight of karate after stabbing Ray, but she successfully subdues him by employing moves copied from The Matrix (and by doing a brief Irish jig while levitating) and kicks him through a window. Nonetheless, Ghostface vanishes before the police arrive.

At the police station, Cindy and the local sheriff (Kurt Fuller) realize that Doofy, the only one who knew about the car accident, was actually faking his disability and is the true killer. Unfortunately, Doofy has already escaped with Gail Hailstorm. Upon finding his discarded disguise in the street, Cindy begins screaming, causing her to be get hit by a car.

In a post credit scene, Shorty appears and breaks the fourth wall by giving tips on how to survive a horror movie. The ways tips he gives is you got to be quick, don't fall down and the most important one is to never look back. After that he yells "Snatch and run ya'll!" then him and his friends turn out to be at a gas station store and steal the food and drinks from the gas station as the man at the cash register yells after them to stop.

Cast

Parodies

Much of the humor of Scary Movie relies upon specific references to other contemporary films. Roger Ebert remarked in his review that "to get your money's worth, you need to be familiar with the various teenage horror franchises."[2] The backstory of the film's plot is modeled after I Know What You Did Last Summer including the teens' accidental murder of an innocent man on a car ride and Barry's murder onstage.[2] Several elements are borrowed from the Scream franchise[2] including the character Ghostface, the murder of Drew in the opening scene, the attack in the movie theatre was modeled after Scream 2, and the "rules of a trilogy" video from Scream 3. While smoking marijuana, Shorty quips "I see dead people", the line famously spoken by Oscar nominee Haley Joel Osment in The Sixth Sense.[3] In a chase scene, the film shifts its point of view to that of a hand-held camera with the characters speaking directly to the audience as in The Blair Witch Project.[3] The scene in which Ray is about to stab Bobby to make the police believe they were the victims of the killer borrows heavily from a similar scene that takes place during the climax of Scream. The killer says the words "Red Rum", a reference to The Shining, before he kills Buffy. The line "We all go a little crazy sometimes" is also used, which is taken from Scream quoting Psycho.

Many scenes and jokes parody or reference other films outside the horror film genre. The fight between Cindy and the killer heavily mimics The Matrix, particularly its use of bullet time.[2] The final scene, in which Doofy stops feigning his disability and drives away with Gail, is a takeoff of the final scene of The Usual Suspects.[3] When asked about her favorite horror movie, Drew answers "Kazaam" due to Shaquille O'Neal's acting.[2] Cindy becomes aggressive and roars "Say my name!" during sex with Bobby, similar to the sex scene between Michelle and Jim in American Pie.[3] A trailer for a fictitious sequel to Amistad titled Amistad II with elements of Titanic appears in the movie theater scene.[4]

The film also makes other pop culture references beyond the scope of film, including a brief send-up of Dawson's Creek[5] and a parody of the Whassup? ad campaign by Budweiser.[5] Drew (Carmen Electra)'s boyfriend at the beginning of the movie, the one she "slept with but didn't date" was Prince, who Electra dated in real life.

Subjects parodied or referenced
I Know What You Did Last Summer, I Still Know What You Did Last Summer
Scream, Scream 2, Scream 3
The Sixth Sense
The Blair Witch Project
The Exorcist
Election
Kazaam
The Shining
Halloween
Shakespeare in Love
Amistad
Thelma & Louise
American Pie
The Matrix
The Fugitive
Big Momma's House
Titanic
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
The Usual Suspects
Schindler's List
Boogie Nights
The Wayans Bros.
Psycho
Whassup?
Dawson's Creek
Jackie Chan filmography

Rating

In British Columbia, the film Scary Movie was given an 18A rating by the provincial FCO, but was re-rated on appeal by the Motion Picture and Liquor Appeal Board to a 14A. This resulted in a record number of complaints to the British Columbia Film Classification Office from parents who felt the film should have been rated 18A. Many parents wrote letters to their local newspaper warning others that the film may be inappropriate for their fourteen-year-olds. Theatre owners complained about the inappropriate rating as well.[6]

Reception

The film received mixed reviews from critics. On Rotten Tomatoes, 54% of critics gave the film a positive review based on 112 reviews.[7]

Joe Leydon of Entertainment Weekly gave the film a positive review, remarking that the film was "unbounded by taste, inhibition or political correctness" and that "the outer limits of R-rated respectability are stretched, if not shredded" by the movie.[3] By contrast, Roger Ebert did not find the film as innovative, saying that the film lacked "the shocking impact of Airplane!, which had the advantage of breaking new ground."[2] However, Ebert did give the film 3 stars out of 4, saying it "delivers the goods," calling the film a "raucous, satirical attack on slasher movies."

Bob Longino of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution felt that the film's crude humor detracted from the film, saying that Scary Movie "dives so deep into tasteless humor that it's a wonder it landed an R rating instead of an NC-17."[8] Other reviewers, such as A.O. Scott of The New York Times, argued that the jokes were "annoying less for their vulgarity than for their tiredness."[4] Scott remarked in his review, "Couch-bound pot smokers, prison sex, mannish female gym teachers, those Whassssup Budweiser commercials -- hasn't it all been done to death?".[4]

Soundtrack

Untitled
Professional ratings
Review scores
SourceRating
AllMusic[9]

The soundtrack to Scary Movie was released on July 4, 2000 through TVT Records and consists of a blend of hip hop and rock music.

Track listing
  1. "Too Cool for School"- 2:27 (Fountains of Wayne)
  2. "The Inevitable Return of the Great White Dope"- 3:53 (Bloodhound Gang)
  3. "Stay"- 3:56 (Radford)
  4. "The Only Way to Be"- 3:20 (Save Ferris)
  5. "My Bad"- 3:22 (Oleander)
  6. "Punk Song #2"- 2:46 (Silverchair)
  7. "Everybody Wants You"- 4:11 (Unband)
  8. "Superfly"- 2:55 (Bender)
  9. "I Wanna Be Sedated"- 2:31 (The Ramones)
  10. "Scary Movies (Sequel)"- 3:56 (Bad Meets Evil)
  11. "All bout U"- 4:34 (Tupac Shakur, Top Dogg, Yaki Kadafi, Hussein Fatal, Nate Dogg & Dru Down)
  12. "I Want Cha"- 4:37 (Black Eyed Peas)
  13. "What What"- 5:03 (Public Enemy)
  14. "Feel Me"- 3:49 (Rah Digga, Rampage & Rock)
  15. "I'm the Killer"- 3:57 (Lifelong & Incident)

See also

References

  1. ^ http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=87145
  2. ^ a b c d e f Ebert, Roger (July 7, 2000). "Scary Movie". Chicago Sun-Times. Retrieved 2011-04-18.
  3. ^ a b c d e Schwarzbaum, Lisa (July 21, 2000). "Scary Movie". Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved 2011-04-18.
  4. ^ a b c Scott, A. O. Tomatoes "Scary Movie". New York Times. Retrieved 2011-04-18. {{cite web}}: Check |url= value (help)
  5. ^ a b Leydon, Joe (June 29, 2000). "Scary Movie". Variety. Retrieved 2011-04-18.
  6. ^ Pelton, Steven (2004-08-19). "RECONSIDERATION DECISION: GOING THE DISTANCE requested by Odeon Films" (PDF). British Columbia Film Classification Office. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2007-09-27. Retrieved 2007-12-01.
  7. ^ Scary Movie at Rotten TomatoesFlixster
  8. ^ Longino, Bob. "Scary Movie". The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Retrieved 2011-04-18.
  9. ^ Scary Movie at AllMusic

External links

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