(2001)
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(2001) |
Most of the cast of Scary Movie is enlisted in a research project that has them investigating a haunted house.
Also known as: Scarier Movie (UK title), Scary Movie II (alternate spelling)
Subgenres: comedy, ghost
Director: Keenen Ivory Wayans
Writer: Shawn Wayans, Marlon Wayans, Alyson Fouse, Greg Grabianski, Dave Polsky, Michael Anthony Snowden, Craig Wayans
Starring: Anna Faris, Marlon Wayans
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The toughest thing to do in a flat-out Airplane-style parody is to make the jokes organic. And by that, I don't mean "anatomical" or "scatological." By "organic," I mean making the humor fit into the story, to make the narrative flow naturally and not seem like "a string of pussy jokes," as Monty Python might put it. With the exception of a prologue that has exactly zero to do with the rest of the story, Scary Movie 2 melds its spoofs together like a champ. One would think that using the plot of Jan de Bont's The Haunting as the basis for a spoof is kind of dicey. Some critics have said that it's much more effective to mock a good film than it is to take a bad one to task. I disagree; it isn't the quality of the original film that's an indicator of how good parodies of it may be; it's how seriously the original film took itself. The more self-absorbed the subject is, the more fun we have ripping it apart. And the Haunting remake took itself very seriously--that's part of the reason why it was pretty bad. Most of the films Scary Movie 2 parodies took themselves seriously, and that's part of why Scary Movie 2 works so well. But the main reason it works--aside from the fact that this sequel boasts a superior cast, even if Marlon Mayans steals the show yet again--is because it doesn't try too hard to do so. The writers of the first Scary Movie tried way too hard to be, as I put it in my review, "funny, smart, and gross" all at once. I don't know why--maybe they were rushed, maybe they're lazy after the first film's success, maybe they're just more relaxed this time around--but the humor here doesn't feel like it has to go for the gold each and every time. Instead, the writers actually focused on making the dialogue funny. The concept of the first Scary Movie was malformed in that it was making fun of a movie that was already a deconstruction. Scream did a lot of the parody work on its own, so there wasn't much observation left for Scary Movie to do. As a result, it descend into gross-out humor. Scary Movie 2 takes aim at haunted house conventions and wonders exactly how they got to be that way. In other words, "Would you run from Calista Flockhart?" (Dec 21, 2001) | ||||||
Despite Scary Movie's claim of "No mercy. No shame. No sequel.," here we are.
Parodies plenty of movies, including many haunted house flicks. A likely incomplete list of the horror movies it references: The Amityville Horror, The Changeling, Day of the Triffids, The Entity, The Exorcist, Final Destination, Ghostbusters, Hannibal, The Haunting (1999), House on Haunted Hill (1999), The Legend of Hell House, Poltergeist, Thirteen Ghosts (1960) and What Lies Beneath.
