Scary Movie 5

Movie Information

The Story: Witless horror movie spoof. The Lowdown: If you want to waste 80 minutes of your life, here's your chance.
Score:

Genre: Cretinous Claptrap Horror Spoof
Director: Malcolm D. Lee (Soul Men)
Starring: Ashley Tisdale, Simon Rex, Erica Ash, Katt Williams, Snoop Dog
Rated: PG-13

Don’t. Don’t go see this. Don’t subject yourself to this. Don’t subject your brain to this. Don’t give these people your money and encourage them to make more of this rubbish. Put your foot down. Put both feet down. Just say “no” to the death of millions of brain cells — your brain cells. For the love of humanity, do not see this almost-a-movie. Oh, I have no doubt that humanity will survive this. If it survived 20-plus years of Hee-Haw, humanity can survive one more crummy spoof movie. But why should it have to? More to the point, why should you have to? For that matter, if you’re over the age of 13, why would want to see this? (If you have an answer to that, you probably should keep it to yourself.)

Scary Movie 5 isn’t even just more of the same. It’s more of the same on drugs that get you banned from professional sports. Like most of these spoof movies, it’s mostly a repository of pop culture references. In this case, we get bits and pieces of The Cabin in the Woods, Mama, Paranormal Activity, Paranormal Activity 2, Sinister, Black Swan, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Inception, Fifty Shades of Grey, and the new Evil Dead. (Yes, it takes us all the way back to last week and the new Evil Dead — somebody must have seen it early or borrowed a screenplay.) Oh, yes, it also drags in The Help. The Help? Oh, come now, you didn’t really think anything as scatologically inclined as one of these pictures was going to overlook the possibilities of some excrement baked goods, did you? If there’s one thing the people behind this movie know, it’s excrement. After all, excrement, flatulence, bodily fluids and any reference to any kind of sex is comedy gold — ask any child of 6. Apparently, David Zucker and Pat Proft did.

Most of the “plot” here is taken from Mama with a detour into Black Swan and sketches or passing references involving the rest. Little of this has any actual comic point to make. It’s more like a game of Trivial Pursuit without game pieces or winners. The idea seems to be that the mere recognition of the sources is funny. The ability to identify just what movie is being supposedly spoofed is perhaps a barometer of intellect. (Personally, I’m inclined to feel a little embarrassed to have known that the business with the robotic pool cleaner was drawn from Paranormal Activity 2. It seems to me I ought to have been able to purge that from my mind.) In a perfect world, viewers who score high on their pop culture literacy would be given prizes — preferably passes to real movies.

This is all performed by people you’ve mostly never heard of and is peppered with cameos by people you’d probably like to hear no more about — like Charlie Sheen and Lindsay Lohan — or also never heard of (who is Mac Miller?). If the real people aren’t available, then you get impersonators. Can’t actually get Morgan Freeman to narrate? No, problem. Hire an impressionist (Josh Robert Thompson). Can’t get Tyler Perry to do his Madea schtick? Well, there’s actually a Madea impersonator named Lewis Thompson (who in his self-penned bio on IMDb assures us he trained at the Actor, Model, Talent for Christ Convention in Orlando). And if you can’t get the real Honey Boo Boo — and unthinkable as that is, they apparently couldn’t — there’s one of those, too. Can things possibly get more dispiriting than that? The film ends with the Morgan Freeman impressionist telling us that what we’ve learned from the film is that mankind is pathetic. I don’t know about mankind, but the people responsible for this movie certainly are. Rated PG-13 for crude and sexual content throughout, language, some drug material, partial nudity, comic violence and gore.

Playing at Carmike 10, Carolina Cinemas, Epic of Hendersonville, Regal Biltmore Grande

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About Ken Hanke
Head film critic for Mountain Xpress from December 2000 until his death in June 2016. Author of books "Ken Russell's Films," "Charlie Chan at the Movies," "A Critical Guide to Horror Film Series," "Tim Burton: An Unauthorized Biography of the Filmmaker."

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11 thoughts on “Scary Movie 5

  1. Dionysis

    This is one person that needs no persuasion to avoid this. I accidentally watched a few seconds of one of its trailers on TV a few weeks ago, and have been aware of a certain mental debilitation that seems to have resulted from that brief but toxic exposure.

  2. Jeremy Dylan

    If it survived 20-plus years of Hee-Haw, humanity can survive one more crummy spoof movie.

    Watch it mister! Unless this picture features Buck Owens singing great versions of classic country songs, that comparison is totally uncalled for.

    Can’t actually get Morgan Freeman to narrate? No, problem. Hire an impressionist (Josh Robert Thompson)

    If you really want to hear Thompson, tune into Craig Ferguson’s late night talk show, where he voices Ferguson’s skeleton robot sidekick. This is a much safer environment to experience him in.

  3. Ken Hanke

    Watch it mister! Unless this picture features Buck Owens singing great versions of classic country songs, that comparison is totally uncalled for.

    Thing is you erroneously believe that country and music are not mutually exclusive terms, so you don’t understand.

    If you really want to hear Thompson, tune into Craig Ferguson’s late night talk show, where he voices Ferguson’s skeleton robot sidekick. This is a much safer environment to experience him in.

    I’ve experienced it once. Any more would be an unnecessary indulgence.

  4. Ken Hanke

    Ten bucks says it’s excluded from your health insurance coverage

    Well, so much is that I’m not taking that bet. There’s probably some exclusion for occupational hazards.

  5. Xanadon't

    The film ends with the Morgan Freeman impressionist telling us

    Wait. You made it to the end? Oh my. I’m not positive on whether that doesn’t eclipse integrity and venture into foolishness.

  6. Justin Souther

    I’d like to point out that the proper name of this film is Scary Movie V and I hope the Xpress prints a correction.

  7. Ken Hanke

    Actually, the title is Scary MoVie, but it really only works if you can make the V standout more than just capitalizing it.

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