Review: Scary Movie 5

Last Updated on September 13, 2021

PLOT: Spoofing the movie MAMA, a young couple, Dan (Simon Rex) and Jody (Ashley Tisdale), gets custody of Dan’s late brother’s kids, who are haunted by a ghostly spectre.

REVIEW: Every once in a while a movie comes along that’s just jaw-dropping in it’s badness. I’ve reviewed a few of them here; movies like PASSION PLAY, ALL ABOUT STEVE, TWIXT, NEW YEAR’S EVE, etc. Just when I thought I’d seen the worst of them comes SCARY MOVIE 5 (or rather Scary MoVie), a film that’s so bad that to give it a score of zero on ten seems inadequate. Negative points would be more appropriate.

This- the fifth installment in what has to be one of the worst franchises of all time- is even worse than the last one, which at least had Anna Faris in it, who can usually wring a laugh out of even the worst material. Instead of Faris, we get Ashley Tisdale of the HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL series who, in the merciful short 75 minute running time, spoofs Natalie Portman in BLACK SWAN, Jessica Chastain in MAMA, Katie Featherston in PARANORMAL ACTIVITY and more. Even if it had been Faris instead of Tisdale, I’m pretty sure this wouldn’t be any better, as the material is so atrocious that it’s incredible to think the same people who wrote this were involved with THE NAKED GUN & AIRPLANE.

It’s so sad to see how low David Zucker has fallen, who- along with his brother Jerry and Jim Abrahams, made up the ZAZ team, and produced some of the funniest films of the eighties and early-nineties. When I was growing up, these guys (along with Leslie Nielsen) were like gods to me. To this day, whenever I’m feeling really down in the dumps, I throw on my Blu-ray of AIRPLANE and laugh myself silly. It works every single time. But SCARY MOVIE 5, yeeeesh! Even Malcolm Lee, the director, has made a decent movie or two (I kinda liked UNDERCOVER BROTHER). I have no idea what got into him here, and it’s seems unfathomable to me that anyone involved was trying to make a movie that was even halfway decent. All they do here is try to spoof as many recent movies as possible (even the EVIL DEAD remake that just opened last week), but- duh, they forgot to come up with any decent gags to make fun of them with. Imagine an obnoxious person poking you in the ribs every two minutes and whispering “Black Swan”, “Inception”, “ooooh Fifty Shades of Grey”, “yay- Honey Boo-Boo” and you have an idea of what sitting through this is like.

How bad is it? SCARY MOVIE 5 is so bad that the two best performances in the film come from Charlie Sheen and Lindsay Lohan, and they’re both out of the movie within five minutes. I’m not saying they’re good in it. They’re awful. It just so happens their level of awfulness is slightly above anyone else unfortunate enough to be part of the cast. When you find yourself wishing there was more Lindsay Lohan in a movie, you know it’s bad. SCARY MOVIE 5 is so bad that a DJ spinning a pizza instead of a record is what passes for a sight gag. Or a woman having sex with a microwave. It’s all narrated by a Morgan Freeman impersonator who’s sounds so much like him I honestly think Freeman should sue, lest anyone think he’d actually work on a film this bad.

Truly, this is one of the absolute worst films I’ve ever seen. I have no idea who the intended audience is, and even the group at the free screening that I saw this with seemed to think this was awful, with only the same two or three people laughing throughout. It’s so unbelievably bad, that I’m tempted to think maybe this is just a practical joke by the filmmakers trying to see just had bad they can possibly make a movie, while still getting a full-on theatrical release. The joke’s on anyone unfortunate enough to pay money to see this. Do yourself a big favor and skip it, even if you happen to love the other four. Even by those impossibly low standards this is terrible.