Not everyone has the heart to watch the scary, gory or terrifying horror movie. However, there are still ways to get into the traditional Halloween movie spirit every year. "Scary Movie" serves as a cheat sheet of scary movies, making movie-watchers laugh themselves to sleep rather than have sleepless nights.
The first "Scary Movie" film parodies the “I Know What You Did Last Summer” teen horror genre, along with other late '90s shows and cinemas. In the original film, four teenagers, after hitting a pedestrian in the road, decide to dispose of the body. However, a year later, the teenagers are terrorized by a masked assailant, believed to be the presumed dead person they disposed of, on the anniversary of the cover-up.
The Wayans brothers, creators of the movie, excelled at taking the basic beats of a horror movie and spinning it into a comedy. There are plenty of trashy scary movies, and the poor acting, plotting and dialogue found in these movies are energetically parodied by the Wayans. The "Scream" franchise gets special attention, inspiring the movie's masked villain.
That's not to say that you need to be overly familiar with the horror genre to enjoy "Scary Movie." Among its specific lampooning are plenty of moments of silliness, vulgarity and raunchy humor.
The actors portray the witless college students with aplomb, diving into their respective archetypes. As the movie's protagonist, Anna Faris does a superb job channeling the clueless horror movie heroine. Horror movies thrive on stupidity — its characters flock to danger like flies, making all of the wrong decisions until their incompetence is punished with death. "Scary Movie" pushes this incompetence into farce, and by not taking itself or its characters too seriously, it succeeds in its parody.
Overall, "Scary Movie" is a great not-so-scary movie to watch on the night before Halloween, and for those who are into scary movies, it is a great way to lighten the mood after watching a horror film. The film is a great Thursday night wind-down, along with a bowl of popcorn and candy corn to get in the Halloween spirit.