The Haunting on Some Hill

We reviewed Scary Movie last year as part of Jocular Jesting July, as it fit nicely with coverage of other parody films, most specifically the continued works of Zucker-Abrahams-ZuckerThis comedy collective, also known as ZAZ, consisted of two brothers and their best friend, and they went on to create some of the best parodies of their era.. At that time I only had the first film in the series within easy reach (the Colbert cancellation leading to me cancelling my Paramount+ account in the process), so I watched that film on DVD and then moved on with my life. However, with the second and third films dropping into my hands (due to an easy collection pick-up), we can now get back into it and be entertained by the further adventures of this parody universe.

Although, if I’m being honest, I’ve been dreading this for a while now. I really didn’t like the first Scary Movie when I originally watched it (all the way back in 2000), and my rewatch of the film didn’t really change my mind on the topic. The films, though, were actually fairly popular and quite successful. Of the six films in the series, only the fifth (Scary Movie 5) made less than $100 Mil at the Box Office, and that can be easily attributed to the fact that the genre as a whole had become incredibly oversaturated, with the likes of Date Movie, Epic Movie, Meet the Spartans, Disaster Movie, Vampires Suck, and more driving viewers away. Also, the fifth film is said to be the worst of the set, so that certainly didn’t help matters.

But here, in 2001, the series was still on something of a good run. The first film made $278 Mil on a budget of only $19 Mil, so the hope was that the same creative team – led by Keenan Ivory, Shawn, and Marlon Wayans – would be able to continue to keep the good times moving and the money rolling in. With a bigger budget ($45 Mil) and most of the cast returning (despite many of their characters dying in the previous film), hopes were high this film would replicate the success of the first movie and lead to even bigger returns. Spoilers, it did not.

There are likely many reasons why this film wasn’t nearly as successful as its predecessor, making “only” $141.2 Mil at the Box Office (which, bear in mind, was still a financial success). The first is the fact that this film, unlike the first Scary Movie, isn’t directly based on any one film. The original Scary Movie pulled a trick that other parodies have done before, most obviously Airplane!: take an existing movie and then remake it, but funnier. In the case of Scary Movie, the originating film was Scream (with a dash of I Know What You Did Last Summer mixed in).

The sequel, though, doesn’t base itself on any one film. Its opening minutes riff The Exorcist, before switching to a bit of life on a college campus to evoke Scream 2. From there our heroine, Cindy Campbell (Anna Faris), is invited into a special class alongside the whole host of her returning friends – Regina Hall as Brenda Meeks, Shawn Wayans as Ray Wilkins, Marlon Wayans as Shorty Meeks – plus a couple of new additions as well in the form of Tori Spelling's Alex Monday and Kathleen Robertson's Theo. The class is run by Professor Oldman (Tim Curry) and his assistant, Dwight Hartman (David Cross), and their goal is to study paranormal occurrences in a supposedly haunted mansion (leading to some scenes meant to play on House on Haunted Hill).

Once at the mansion, though, the scariest thing the students find isn’t ghosts or ghouls; it’s the caretaker, Buddy Sanderson (Chris Masterson), a creepy guy with a malformed hand. He takes them around the mansion, cooks them dinner, and is somehow always there. As we learn, he’s been a loyal servant of the master of the house, Hugh Kane (Richard Moll), who was killed by his wife when she found him sleeping with his mistress, Victoria Crane (Jennifer Curran). Now the ghoul seemingly wants revenge (or, at least the occasional booty call), and will let no one and nothing stand in his way.

I am of two minds about this film. On the one hand, narratively, this film is a whole lot weaker than the first movie. Not having a specific film to build off of leaves Scary Movie 2 without a direction. It careens wildly around, doing random riffs on all kinds of films (including Dude, Where's My Car?, Hannibal, Hollow Man, and Charlie's Angels). The film never seems to know what to do or where to go, with plotlines getting raised, and then dropped, seemingly because the creators didn’t have any more jokes to wring out of the material. And then the film just kind of ends, with an out of nowhere climax leading to a tag-ending conclusion that feels more random than justified. Story, in short, is not this film’s strong suit.

But then, it’s a Scary Movie film. Maybe we shouldn’t judge it too harshly for that. Even the first film, with a base built on Scream, was more focused on random riffs than telling a focused and cogent story. At least this film tries to find more humor to work off of, even if it dilutes the “scary” side of its concept. This is less a riff on horror films and more just a parody of whatever works the creative team watched recently. Sometimes that leads to genuine moments of humor, especially when it lets its characters interact and play off each other. There were a few times the film got a solid chuckle out of me, which was more than I was expecting.

Most of the time, though, this film struggles to find anything interesting or funny to do with its runtime. Some riffs go on forever with seemingly no joke insight. Other times, references to other works are thrown in with the thought of “look at this thing we watched, that we’re now referencing. Isn’t that funny?” And the film’s overreliance on certain types of humor – nut shots, gross out humor, and regressive gay, trans, and disabled people jokes – absolutely hold the film back. Most of the time the film wasn’t even able to get a smile out of me, making those few times I chuckled feel like anomalies.

I also wonder just where the $45 Mil budget was spent. The film looks cheap as hell, with bad effects and worse production values. I have to guess it all went into the salaries for the stars and creatives because it’s absolutely not on the screen. Watching the film, if you would have told me that the sequel actually had its budget slashed I wouldn’t have argued with that at all. I’ve watched low-budget Asylum films that feel like they spent more money on their production than anything on screen in Scary Movie 2.

So yes, I can absolutely understand why this film underperformed at the Box Office in comparison to the first film. It’s not riffing on another Scream film, or any other specific one. It has a lot of dead time without any good jokes. And it looks so cheap you’d be shocked to learn it actually cost more than the first to make. Someone messed up in the production of this film and, clearly, heads had to roll. Those heads ended up being the Wayans brothers, who were not invited back for the subsequent third, fourth, and fifth films (David Zucker, of the ZAZ collective, would take over directing duties for the next two films), much to their consternation.

But then, the third film made over $220 Mil so… maybe Dimension Films were right to make the change. Certainly the films couldn’t get much worse than Scary Movie 2, right? Right…?