‘Scary Movie 6’ Review: Not Even the Wayans Can Make Horror Satire Great Again at Paramount

It’s been a hell of a year for Paramount. Between the ongoing fallout surrounding its Skydance merger, intense public scrutiny over journalistic independence at CBS News, and the recent controversy involving former “60 Minutes” correspondent Scott Pelley — who was fired just this week after a high-profile clash with new editorial leadership inside CBS — Paramount has spent a sizable portion of its year reminding audiences not only that the giant conglomerate behind its movies and TV shows exists but that the studio also has strong business ties that can cause real political problems for creatives.

That’s unfortunate timing for “Scary Movie” (2026), a nostalgic franchise revival that’s good enough considering the dark cloud of current events it’s arriving under. Broadly speaking, parody works best when it feels anarchic. And when it comes to the Wayans, smartly rendered shock humor has always played a role in their appeal. But watching them return to “Scary Movie” after nearly 25 years, only to see their parody series fall into corporate clutches, is dispiriting to say the least. 

The good news is that the Wayans have still mostly reclaimed the franchise they founded, after infamous disputes with its Weinstein-era custodians saw the core team ousted before “Scary Movie 3.” The fracture cast has finally reunited, too, with Marlon Wayans and Shawn Wayans appearing alongside stars Anna Faris and Regina Hall. For longtime “Scary Movie” fans, that development alone carries enough genuine emotional weight to make a trip to the movie theater worthwhile.

‘Scary Movie’ (2026)©Paramount/Courtesy Everett Collection

Despite the time between “Scary Movie 6” and the core four’s last appearance in 2001’s “Scary Movie 2,” the lead actors’ chemistry is largely intact today. Director Michael Tiddes, who has never helmed a “Scary Movie” installment but became a key Wayans’ collaborator in the decades since, does a good job reminding viewers why these performers became comedy icons in the first place. But whether the Wayans were protecting against or inviting Paramount’s influence when it came to putting ideas on the page, the Wayans’ uneven return engagement doesn’t ring true to them overall. 

Faris remains the MVP as Cindy Campbell. The “Scary Movie” final girl has long functioned as the series’ secret weapon. Even leaving behind her teen “Scream” origins to step into the aging slasher survivor archetype made famous by Jamie Lee Curtis in “Halloween” (2018), Faris finds surprising ways to make bland or flat jokes at least feel sincere. Hall is similarly delightful as fan favorite Brenda Meeks, who for whatever reason is framed here by an extended riff on Octavia Spencer’s “Ma” that’s hilarious.

Meanwhile, Olivia Rose Keegan makes for inspired casting as Cindy’s daughter, Sarah. The 26-year-old actress does a pitch-perfect Faris impression, and when “Scary Movie 6” focuses on the characters that click, it works. But Marlon’s weed-obsessed Shorty Meeks and Shawn’s not-gay-but-definitely-gay Ray Wilkins struggle to find their comedic sweet spot in arcs that feel dated compared to the rest of the Wayans’ script, co-written by Marlon, Shawn, Keenen Ivory Wayans, Craig Wayans, and Rick Alvarez.

More young newcomers join the cast to flesh out Paramount’s transparent tribute to itself as “Scary Movie 6” takes shape around the studio’s earlier “Scream 6” from 2023. That youthful presence feels almost too current, as the movie’s satire focuses disproportionately on genre discourse cherry-picked from just the last few years. A background gag involving “Final Destination Bloodlines” lands beautifully, and an extra vicious joke aimed at last year’s “I Know What You Did Last Summer” reboot demands big (if reluctant) laughs. There’s a brutal quip about “John Wick” and spinoff culture at Lionsgate. Plus, a reference to the 2014 indie sensation “It Follows” that’s both objectively wrong and decently funny. 

‘Scary Movie’ (2026) ©Paramount/Courtesy Everett Collection

The celebrity cameos in “Scary Movie 6” are generally excellent, beginning with a genuinely inspired cold open that immediately signals the Wayans’ keen understanding of stunt casting. That said, the satirical series’ long overdue revival doesn’t seem entirely sure what story it wants to tell about the horror genre itself. The original “Scary Movie” arrived at the end of a decade dominated by slashers: a trend that had already been softly skewered by “Scream” back then.

By contrast, the last 13 or so years in genre filmmaking have been remarkably complex and dynamic. From the rise of indie auteurs at Neon and A24 to the “elevated horror” discourse that came with it, scary movies have gradually gained more artistic recognition while continuing to support the industry at the box office. But “Scary Movie 6” mostly skips over that, the dominance of The Conjuring Universe and Blumhouse, streaming originals, the explosion of internet horror, and more on its way to quietly presenting an incomplete film history to general horror fans. 

Art the Clown makes an appearance, and some will be surprised to learn Emerald Fennell’s “Saltburn” gets a shoutout. Still, the omissions are striking as social media influencers, Letterboxd users, YouTube critics, true crime obsessives, and more power players in eventizing contemporary nightmares go unscathed. “Scary Movie 6” touches on “M3GAN,” “Smile,” “Candyman,” “Longlegs,” “The Substance,” “Sinners,” “Get Out,” “Weapons,” and more — resulting in a weirdly awards-heavy film that feels best suited to Paramount’s taste. 

‘Scary Movie’ (2026) ©Paramount/Courtesy Everett Collection

In some ways, “Scary Movie 6” reads less like a parody of real movie culture and more like a vague representation of what some Hollywood executives think modern horror is. That cultural narrowing extends beyond pop culture and deep into politics. To their credit, the Wayans don’t entirely retreat from controversy. There are jokes involving Black Lives Matter, Trump, pronouns, Diddy, Drake, Michael Jackson, #MeToo, and even a reference to the noxious “MAGA Shaman” made infamous by January 6. 

In that sense, the Wayans display an audacious willingness to wander into uncomfortable territory at a time when many entertainers are avoiding talking about political tensions altogether. Some particularly outrageous one-liners about race snuck into the final cut, but much of the film’s dicier material comes off as weirdly effortful instead of reckless. The original “Scary Movie” chapters from the Wayans were vulgar, chaotic, and offensive — precisely because the comedians weren’t tempted by the false promise of universal likability. 

But “Scary Movie 6” seems to have engineered transgression more than came naturally to the production, and plenty of jokes about gender, sexuality, and trans identity were met with awkward chuckles just because they didn’t land. An R-rated comedy that spends this much time discussing blow jobs, cunnilingus, and pegging shouldn’t feel so sexless. And yet, physical beats play consistently better than any of the film’s sharpest written satire.

That probably wasn’t an accident. Directed by David Zucker, “Scary Movie 3” and “Scary Movie 4” taught the franchise that visual gags went farther with the series’ general audience than the Wayans’ biting social commentary — suggesting a frustrating contradiction still lurks within the franchise’s latest release. “Scary Movie 6” wants credit for saying the unsayable while simultaneously seeming more nervous than ever to find out what, exactly, they can get away with.

‘Scary Movie’ (2026) ©Paramount/Courtesy Everett Collection

Nowhere is that tension more obvious than in this film’s relationship with Paramount’s recent “Scream” movies. That IP’s influence looms over nearly everything in “Scary Movie,” and one late joke involving a thinly disguised stand-in for a controversial “Scream 7” character decision is likely to generate controversy. That said, the Wayans never directly engage with the real-world debate hanging over Ghostface, despite “Scream 7” being widely panned earlier this year after Melissa Barrera was dismissed from the franchise over social media posts about Gaza. 

Nobody should be looking to “Scary Movie” for nuanced geopolitical analysis, and only a dumbass would be genuinely offended by what the Wayans didn’t mock in this movie. But great satire is often defined as much by what it excludes, and refusing to engage with any actual controversy at Paramount (outside of one very weak line involving Neve Campbell), “Scary Movie 6” manages to come across as thoughtless and toothless at the same time.

I recently asked legendary horror director Joe Dante about the state of satire in modern Hollywood during a live Q&A at Vidiots in Los Angeles. The answer was hopeful but blunt, saying that even when he made “Gremlins 2: The New Batch” — one of the most gloriously self-destructive studio movies ever made — at Warner Bros., the industry was never particularly friendly to parody. Even discussing a film from 1990, that’s a thorny observation to ignore. 

Watching “Scary Movie 6,” I found myself thinking about the 79-year-old filmmaker’s perspective often. Not because the work feels explicitly censored but because it seems in many ways dishonestly curated. If American satire increasingly arrives in theaters pre-shaped by corporate ideology and brand management, our shared understanding of recent film history could become troublingly selective. In that sense, the Wayans made it back for one last “Wazzzzup?” that proves they could reclaim the property if not its formerly killer point of view.

Grade: C+

From Paramount, “Scary Movie” (2026) is in theaters on June 5.

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