STORY: The latest from the Scary Movie stable serves up childish gags, faux-scares and spoofs aplenty from Paranormal Activity, Mama, Inception, Evil Dead, Black Swan and more. MOVIE REVIEW: A washed-out looking Charlie Sheen and Lindsay Lohan appear at the beginning of the equally washed-out version of this franchise, kicking off a string of puerile scenes held together by no sense of logic or reason.
The only semblance of a ‘plot’ this film has is when a couple, Jody and Dan (Ashley Tisdale and Simon Rex, respectively), move into a new home with their baby son and immediately afterwards, start to experience all kinds of ‘events’ that range from mildly depraved to downright psychotic. They then try to get to the bottom of these strange happenings. It’s as if someone with a 5-year-old’s sense of humour has been given free rein to make a film and gone overboard with – quite literally – toilet humour.
For the rest of it, the movie relies heavily on send-ups from Paranormal Activity, Mama and Evil Dead. Rise of the Planet of the Apes also gets its own goofball version here. It actually might seem that the apes manage to put on a better act than some of the real-life cast members. And who could have thought that even a movie like Inception could be spoofed? This scene starts off funnily but soon loses steam.
The genuinely funny bits (about five or so) seem to be clustered at the beginning. Snoop Lion knows how to deliver a good laugh and Sheen has made selfdeprecating humour his new ‘thing’. Lohan is just plain embarrassing to watch. And it goes downhill from there. Tolerable in small doses, it looks like it has been cobbled together from random sequences. However, while the Scary Movie series has always been slapstick, a handful of funny bits do not make a successful comedy.