Dimension Films released Scary Movie in the United States on July 7, 2000. The film grossed $278 million worldwide on a $19 million budget.[3] The film is the first installment in the Scary Movie film series, as well as being the highest-grossing film in the series. The film received mixed reviews from critics, with the film's humor dividing critics. It later spawned four sequels, starting with 2001's Scary Movie 2.
Plot
On Halloween night, Drew Decker receives a threatening phone call while home alone. Chased outside by somebody dressed as Ghostface, she is stripped to her bra and panties before being stabbed in the breast, removing one of her siliconeimplants. A vehicle driven by her father, who is distracted by receiving fellatio, hits her, and she looks at her murderer just before she is fatally stabbed.
Cindy Campbell meets up with her boyfriend Bobby Prinze and her friends, Brenda Meeks, Ray Wilkins, Greg Phillippe, Buffy Gilmore and Brenda's stoner brother Shorty. News teams, including hack reporter Gail Hailstorm, converge on the school because of Drew's murder. Gail hooks up with Buffy's intellectually disabled brother Special Officer Doofy to get info from him.
While in class, Cindy notices the killer watching her from outside before receiving an ominous note and realizes Drew was murdered exactly one year after she and her friends accidentally killed a man. After football practice, Greg finds a photo of his minuscule genitals on his locker saying "I KNOW" on it. Believing Ray took it, he nearly fights him.
Cindy tells her friends about the note, attempting to convince them to tell the police, but Greg beats her instead, fearing imprisonment for the murder of last year. At Buffy's beauty pageant that evening, the killer gets Greg in plain view, while the audience mistakes her pleas for help as part of her dramatic reading. Buffy ends up winning the pageant and forgets Greg.
Cindy goes home alone, the killer attacks her but retreats when she contacts the police. Bobby arrives and is arrested after a cellphone, knife and gloves fall out of his pocket. As Cindy spends the night at Buffy and Doofy's, she receives a call from the killer.
The following day, Bobby is released from jail. Buffy is beheaded by the killer with a cleaver. That night, Gail and her cameraman Kenny go to makeout spot Lovers Lookout to get a murder on camera. After they film the killer murdering teen Heather, he chases them into the woods and murders Kenny. Gail later gives a snot-filled apology to Kenny's family, a parody of a scene from The Blair Witch Project.
Later that night, Ray and Brenda go to the movies to see Shakespeare in Love, where he is stabbed through his ear in a bathroom stall through a glory hole. The killer chases Brenda, but angry movie patrons, fed up with her talking during the movie and her obnoxious behavior, stab her to death to make her stop and also as revenge for ruining Shakespeare in Love and several movies like Thelma and Louise, The Fugitive, Schindler's List, all Jackie Chan movies, Boogie Nights, and Big Momma's House until Brenda drops dead, much to the audience's relief.
Meanwhile, Cindy has a house party, hoping for safety in numbers. One of her friends Tina gets killed while getting beer from the garage. During the party, Cindy and Bobby go upstairs and have sex. The killer gets stoned with Shorty and his friends in the basement, but kills all but Shorty. After the pair has sex, the killer stabs Bobby and disappears. Cindy gets a gun from a drawer and Bobby follows. Shorty comes up from the basement warning about the killer, but Bobby shoots him. Ray arrives on the scene, still alive.
Bobby and Ray confront Cindy in the kitchen, announcing they will only kill her and her father, and that they are merely copying the real killer. Bobby admits being gay, while Ray denies it. The plan backfires when Ray stabs Bobby repeatedly out of anger and outrage because his favorite show, The Wayans Bros., has been canceled after five seasons without getting a final episode. The killer abruptly arrives and stabs him, so Cindy kicks him out a window, employing moves from The Matrix. However, the killer vanishes before the police arrive, to Cindy's dismay.
At the police station, Cindy and the sheriff discover the killer was Doofy and not David Keegan, the man whom Cindy and her friends accidentally killed a year earlier. He was faking his disability and has escaped with Gail Hailstorm after removing his disguise, similar to the ending of The Usual Suspects. Finding his discarded backpack with his Ghostface mask and knife in the street, Cindy begins screaming but is run over by a car as the sheriff walks away.
Anna Faris had graduated from the University of Washington and planned to travel to London, but decided instead to go to Los Angeles and after meeting with some managers; she then auditioned for the film and booked her first acting job.[6][4] Keenen had rejected many other actresses, and was willing to take the chance on Faris despite her lack of experience because of her instinctual performance. He said: "She had this natural innocence and was funny.[7]Jenny McCarthy and Melissa Joan Hart auditioned for the part of Drew Decker, before Carmen Electra was cast.[4]
Parodies
Much of the humor of Scary Movie relies upon specific references to other contemporary films. Roger Ebert remarked in his review that "to get your money's worth, you need to be familiar with the various teenage horror franchises."[8] The two films on which the script is most heavily based are Scream (1996) and I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997) (both written by Kevin Williamson), using the general narrative arcs of both films, and featuring comedic recreations of key scenes.[9] The backstory in which the teenagers are responsible for accidentally killing a man following a beauty pageant recalls the same plot point in I Know What You Did Last Summer.[8] Major references to Scream include the identity of Ghostface and the murder of Drew Decker in the opening scene, a reference to the opening scene of Scream in which the same thing occurs to the character of Casey Becker, played by Drew Barrymore.[8] Additionally, the characters of Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer are mirrored in the film, and the title "Scary Movie" was originally the working title for the project that would eventually become Scream.[9] At one point the title of this film was going to be "Scream If You Still Know What I Did Last Halloween".[10] Although the Ghostface mask and costume was a replica, the original costume in the Scream series was used when Cindy notices the killer outside of the school.
Many scenes and jokes parody or reference other films outside the horror film genre. The fight between Cindy and the killer heavily mimics The Matrix, particularly its use of bullet time.[8] The final scene, in which Doofy stops feigning his disability and drives away with Gail, is a takeoff of the final scene of The Usual Suspects.[11][12] When asked about her favorite horror movie, Drew answers "Kazaam" due to Shaquille O'Neal's acting.[8] Cindy becomes aggressive and roars "Say my name!" during sex with Bobby, similar to the sex scene between Michelle and Jim in American Pie.[12] The movie theater scene shows a screening of Shakespeare In Love and a trailer for a fictitious sequel to Amistad titled Amistad II with elements of Titanic also appears in the movie theater scene.[10] When Gail and her cameraman are attacked by the killer, she partakes in a parody of the famous scene in The Blair Witch Project where Heather records an apology to her friends' parents.
The tagline for the movie's poster was "No Shame. No Mercy. No Sequel." When Scary Movie 2 was released a year later, the tagline for the sequel was "We Lied."[13]
Scream 2 (1997): Brenda's death parodies Maureen Evans' in the opening theater scene, and Cindy's chase scene references CiCi Cooper throwing a bicycle down the stairs, as well as the killer falling over a chair from Sidney Prescott's chase scene.
Scream 3 (2000): Post video of Shorty giving advice what to do in a sequel.
Halloween (1978): The scene in which Cindy spots the killer outside her classroom window is a direct parody to the scene from Halloween, in which Laurie Strode first spots Michael Myers outside her classroom window.[9][10]
Scary Movie was released on DVD and VHS on December 12, 2000.[16]
Reception
Box office
Scary Movie opened theatrically in the United States on July 7, 2000, on 1,912 screens, and debuted at number one at the box office, earning $42,346,669 during its opening weekend.[3] It went on to break Air Force One's record for having the biggest opening weekend for any R-rated film.[17] The film ultimately grossed $157,019,771 domestically, and earned another $121,000,000 in other markets, making it a massive commercial success.[3]
Critical response
Scary Movie received mixed reviews from critics. On review aggregatorRotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 51% based on 117 reviews, with an average score of 5.50/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Critics say Scary Movie overloads on crudity and grossness to get its laughs."[18] On Metacritic, the film received a score of 48 based on 32 reviews, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[19] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B−" on an A+ to F scale.[20]
Joe Leydon of Variety said that the film was "unbounded by taste, inhibition or political correctness" and that "the outer limits of R-rated respectability are stretched, if not shredded". Leydon concluded the film is "practically guaranteed to make you laugh until you're ashamed of yourself".[11]Roger Ebert gave the film three stars out of four, saying it "delivers the goods", calling the film a "raucous, satirical attack on slasher movies." However, Ebert was critical of the film for not being as innovative as other films, saying it lacked "the shocking impact of Airplane!, which had the advantage of breaking new ground."[8]
Bob Longino of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution felt that the film's crude humor detracted from the film, saying that Scary Movie "dives so deep into tasteless humor that it's a wonder it landed an R rating instead of an NC-17."[21] Other reviewers, such as A.O. Scott of The New York Times, argued that the jokes were "annoying less for their vulgarity than for their tiredness." Scott remarked "Couch-bound pot smokers, prison sex, mannish female gym teachers, those Whassssup Budweiser commercials—hasn't it all been done to death?"[10]
Peter Howell of The Toronto Star wrote that the film "doesn't just push the gross-out envelope, it folds, spindles, mutilates and mails it to your mama." He adds, however, that "Scary Movie has a nasty side to it that negates much of the humour. Many jokes are just plain sexist, racist, homophobic, violent . . . and not funny. A scene where a woman is knocked to the ground by an angry man who then proceeds to brutally kick her is sickening to watch. The film's frequent use of profanity also seems gratuitous, even by these standards, but that may be beside the point. By the time you realize the four-letter word count is running high, the plot itself has become repetitious and forced."[22]
^Arnold, Shayna Rose (September 23, 2013). "Anna Faris". Los Angeles Magazine. Lamag.com. Archived from the original on March 4, 2016. Retrieved February 27, 2022.
