Scary Movie is a 2000 American parody film directed by Keenen Ivory Wayans and written by Marlon and Shawn Wayans (who both also star), alongside Buddy Johnson, Phil Beauman, Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer. The film stars Jon Abrahams, Carmen Electra, Shannon Elizabeth, Anna Faris, Kurt Fuller, Regina Hall, Lochlyn Munro, Cheri Oteri, and Dave Sheridan. The film, a parody of the slasher film genre, most notably the I Know What You Did Last Summer and Scream franchises, follows a group of teenagers who accidentally hit a man with their car, dump his body in a lake, and swear to secrecy. A year later, someone wearing a Ghostface mask and robe begins hunting them one by one.
Dimension Films released Scary Movie in the United States on July 7, 2000. The film grossed $278 million worldwide on a $19 million budget and is the highest-grossing in the series. It was the ninth-highest-grossing film of the year in the United States. The film is the first installment in the Scary Movie film series. The film received mixed reviews from critics, and later spawned five sequels, starting with Scary Movie 2 in 2001.
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 silicone implants. Her father, who is distracted by receiving fellatio from her mother, accidentally hits her with his vehicle, 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. Cindy is being pressured by Bobby to have sex as a couple for the first time. News teams, including hack reporter Gail Hailstorm, converge on the school because of Drew's murder. Gail seduces Buffy's intellectually disabled brother, Special Officer Doofy, to elicit information 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 small penis 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 the previous year. At Buffy's beauty pageant that evening, the killer murders Greg in plain view, while the audience mistakes her pleas for help as part of her dramatic reading. Buffy eventually wins the pageant and forgets Greg.
The killer attacks Cindy while home alone 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 a makeout spot to get a murder on camera. After they film the killer murdering teenager 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, weary of her talking during the film and her obnoxious behavior, stab her to death to silence her as revenge for spoiling several films.
Meanwhile, Cindy has a house party, hoping for safety in numbers. One of her friends, Tina, is killed while getting beer from the garage. During the party, Cindy finally decides to go upstairs with Bobby and have sex. The killer gets stoned with Shorty and his friends in the basement, but accidentally kills all but Shorty. The killer later 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 and revealing himself as Bobby's partner.
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 shares that he resented Cindy for not consummating their relationship, making him sexually explore with Ray. He admits to being gay, while Ray denies it. The plan backfires when Ray stabs Bobby repeatedly out of anger because his favorite show, The Wayans Bros., has been canceled after five seasons without getting a final episode. The killer abruptly arrives and stabs Ray, 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. 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.
Cast
Production
Shawn Wayans conceived a movie that would parody 1990s teen-slasher movies, and he along with Marlon Wayans, and writing partners Buddy Johnson and Phil Beauman wrote a script with the reported working title of Last Summer I Screamed Because Halloween Fell on Friday the 13th. At the same time, screenwriters Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer (who created the 1996 James Bond spoof Spy Hard) were working on an idea for a movie called Scream If I Know What You Did Last Halloween. Dimension Films, a subsidiary of Miramax Films, bought both, and gave the Friedberg/Seltzer script to the Wayans brothers. The Writers Guild of America gave writing credits to both groups, infuriating the Wayans, who argued that none of Friedberg and Seltzer’s work was used in the finished product.
Anna Faris had graduated from the University of Washington and planned to live and work in London, but decided instead to go to Los Angeles for a year. There she auditioned for the film and booked her first acting job. 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." Jenny McCarthy and Melissa Joan Hart auditioned for the part of Drew Decker, before Carmen Electra was cast. Aaliyah was offered the role of Brenda but declined out of respect for fellow R&B singer Brandy, feeling that the Scary Movie character parodied Brandy's role in I Still Know What You Did Last Summer (1998).
Principal photography took place from August 16, 1999 to October 18, 1999, primarily in British Columbia, Canada.
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." 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. 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. 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. 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. At one point the title of this film was going to be "Scream If You Still Know What I Did Last Halloween". Although the Ghostface mask and costume was a replica, the original costume from the Scream series was used in the scene where 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. 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. When asked about her favorite horror movie, Drew answers "Kazaam" due to Shaquille O'Neal's acting. Cindy becomes aggressive and roars "Say my name!" during sex with Bobby, similar to the sex scene between Michelle and Jim in American Pie. 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. 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 Hailstorm records an apology to her friends' parents.
The film also makes other pop culture references beyond the scope of film, such as the parodied version of Sarah Michelle Gellar's character Helen Shivers in I Know What You Did Last Summer being named Buffy, which is a reference to her character in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Others include a brief references to Dawson's Creek, Candid Camera, Big Momma's House, Candyman, Friday the 13th and a parody of the Whassup? ad campaign by Budweiser.
The tagline for the movie's poster was "No Mercy. No Shame. No Sequel." When Scary Movie 2 was released a year later, the tagline for the sequel was "We Lied."
Films parodied Scream (1996): Main parody 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. I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997): Main parody The Sixth Sense (1999): Character of Shorty says "I see dead people". The Blair Witch Project (1999): Gail Hailstorm references famous "I'm so scared" scene. 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. Friday the 13th (1980): Killer says "ch ch ch ah ah ah", a famous sound effect in the Friday the 13th franchise. The Shining (1980): Killer says "Redrum". The Matrix (1999): Climax references several fight scenes. The Usual Suspects (1995): Ending parodies the twist ending. Psycho (1960): Bobby references the Norman Bates line when he says "we all go a little crazy sometimes", imitating Billy Loomis in Scream. Candyman (1992): Ray tells Cindy that she "branded [Bobby] the Candyman" after Bobby was released from jail.
Music
The compilation album entitled Scary Movie: Music That Inspired The Soundtrack? was released on July 4, 2000, through TVT Soundtrax and consists of a blend of hip-hop and rock music. In 2004, the soundtrack peaked at number 26 on the Official Soundtrack Albums Chart in the UK.
Track listing
Release Home media Scary Movie was released on DVD and VHS on December 12, 2000, by Disney's Buena Vista Home Entertainment (under the Dimension Home Video banner). In 2007, it was released on Blu-ray.