Scary Movie V

Cast of Characters:
Jody Sanders - Ashley Tisdale
Dan Sanders - Simon Rex
Kendra Brooks - Erica Ash
Natalie - Katrina Bowden
Martin - Terry Crews
Barbara Sanders - Heather Locklear
Pierre - J.P. Manoux
Mac Miller - Himself
Christian Grey - Jerry O’Connell
Heather Darcy - Molly Shannon
Snoop Dogg - Himself
Dom Kolb’s wife - Kate Walsh
Blaine Fulda - Katt Williams

Director - Malcolm D. Lee
Screenplay - David Zucker & Pat Proft
Rated PG-13 for crude and sexual content throughout, language, some drug material, partial nudity, comic violence and gore

In 2000, Scary Movie was released followed by three sequels in 2001, 2003, and 2006 respectively. Like Airplane!, Top Secret!, and The Naked Gun series, the Scary Movie films are spoofs lampooning many well known horror films. Now in 2013, we have the fifth entry in the Scary Movie franchise.

      Scary Movie V opens with Charlie Sheen being killed after recording a sex-tape with Lindsay Lohan. His three children are found in a cabin in the woods by Snoop Dogg and Mac Miller, and are soon adopted by Charlie's brother, Dan Sanders (Simon Rex) and his wife Jody (Ashley Tisdale). Things don't seem right though as the two oldest children (the other's an infant) keep calling out to an imaginary figure named Mama. Dan and Jody try everything from video recording any activity in the house to bringing in a psychic, Blaine Fulda (Katt Williams) to try and explain what is happening. Jody then brings in a dream extractor that figures out the source of these hauntings lie in an evil book of the dead.

      What the fuck did I just watch? I don't even know where to begin. I'll just start at the beginning with Charlie Sheen and Lindsay Lohan playing themselves in two performances that have them winking at the camera so hard you'd swear they're both experiencing a stroke. We get it. They're bad, drug addled, sex addicted, stupid, stupid people. It wasn't even that funny to begin with. Then we have Snoop Dogg and Mac Miller spoofing The Cabin in the Woods. There really was no joke there. It was just the two of them referencing the film by repeating the phrase "The Cabin in the Woods" over and over again - I counted seven times within the span of thirty seconds. Plus, The Cabin in the Woods - an entertainingly funny film I strongly recommend seeing - was a parody itself, so how exactly do you parody a parody? Well, other than saying the title over and over... The Cabin in the Woods. Get it, readers? Get it? I’m not sure why Mama was the main focus of satirizing when it was just released no more than three months ago (although that’s not quite as recent as them spoofing Evil Dead which was just released a week prior to this film). Plus, as good of a horror film as Mama was, what’s to spoof there that hasn’t already been done in Scary Movie 3 with The Ring parody (e.g., creepy kid, ugly ghost creature, etc.)?  I could also go on about the Inception, Black Swan, and Rise of the Planet of the Apes parodies that really have no connection to the film at all other than, “Hey, look, everybody! We’re spoofing other popular movies. Get it? While we’re at it, let’s throw in 'Fifty Shades of Grey', Madea, The Real Housewives, and Honey Boo Boo, so people see we’re hip with pop culture!" Speaking of Honey Boo Boo, two of my friends brought that scene (spoofing Sinister) up and I mentioned that it was them poking fun at that piggish Reality TV star. Their response was, “Who’s Honey Boo Boo?” There you go. No connection to the story. Nothing clever. It’s just a pop culture reference (that are - as I just mentioned - not even guaranteed to make sense to the viewer), and when in doubt just have a character punch someone in the face. Poor Ashley Tisdale. Throughout the entire movie she looks so bored out of her mind I don't even think the paycheck she got could excite her. Then again, she probably saw her former High School Musical co-star Vanessa Hudgens in Spring Breakers and thought to herself, "How the hell did she get to be in one of the best films so far this year, and I'm stuck doing this?" Hmm... It was probably depression more than boredom now that I think about it.

      What's most disappointing about this film is that it was written by the great spoof filmmaker David Zucker who made some of the greatest spoof comedies of all-time including Airplane!, Top Secret!, The Naked Gun films, and even Scary Movie 3 which was funny as were the first two directed by Keenan Ivory Wayans. The humor was outlandish, but there was a subtle layer of cleverness to them that made it great. With Airplane! for example, everyone to this day remembers Ted Striker's "drinking problem" gag and my favorite, Barbara Billingsley (aka Mrs. June Cleaver) speaking Jive to the two black passengers. Jokes like that were just to name a few that were creative, hilarious, and in no need of an explanation. You didn't need the actors explaining the joke in a way too obvious manner (like Snoop Dogg saying, "We gotta get to that cabin in the woods... wink, wink). The problem with spoofs now - and you started to see this with Scary Movie 4 - is that it's all about how many pop-culture or film references you can cram into one movie (there were eleven film spoofs with this movie) regardless of whether it makes sense to the story or not. There's no doubt Zucker can make a great movie that has you laughing 'til you cry, but like any great filmmaker, when they put together a pile of shit that stinks as bad as this one, you hold them accountable. The writing here is weak, lazy, unfunny, stupid, stupid, stupid and to put just how unfunny this film is into perspective, well, I laughed more during Schindler's List. I hate to say it, but if the spoof genre isn't dead, it's most certainly on life support and this film is holding the plug and on the verge of yanking it out of the outlet. I hope David Zucker can bounce back and make a movie that gets me to laugh as much as many of his past films have. He has what it takes, but with Scary Movie V, there's no excuse he can give me to explain how shitty this film is. There won't be a worse film this year. That's a bold statement to make in April, but that first seed spot for worst of the year just got locked up. Take heart, other shitty films yet to be released in 2013. You're not the worst. "I've come back from worse than this!", says Charlie Sheen in that clip I just played... He better hope so. I give Scary Movie V an F (0 stars).

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