One of the reasons for the success of American slasher movies is that they confirm the predominantly middle-class teenagers’ worst suspicions about their parents’ world. It’s as nasty and violent as the news implies, and the new bogey-man or archetype of that world is the serial killer.
Now comes Scary Movie, the send-up of all those films, from I Know What You Did Last Summer and the Scream series to the Blair Witch Project and The Matrix, and its box-office takings show that it couldn’t have come at a better time. Even its tagline is funny: “No mercy. No shame. No sequel.”
Six college friends accidentally hit a pedestrian while having a suck session in a speeding car. When he protests that he isn’t dead they ignore him and dispose of him in a dam anyway. A year later they’re stalked by an inept serial killer, who makes the classic stalking mistake of having his feet stick out behind the sofa when he’s calling his prey in her house. Drifting around on campus is a drooling moron as the equivalent of a police reservist, who has a very special relationship with his vacuum cleaner. Stay until the end of the credits to see how that particular relationship is resolved.
Directed by Keenen Ivory Wayans, written by Shaun and Marlon Wayans and starring, among others, Shaun as a not-so deeply repressed closet case and Marlon as a complete ganja-smoking goofball, it is a hilariously forgettable, 90-minute respite from retch season.