<Review by: Sailesh Ghelani>

Directed by David Zucker. Starring Ashley Tisdale, Simon Rex, Charlie Sheen, Lindsay Lohan, Regina Hall, Katt Williams, Chris Elliott, Heather Locklear, Jerry O’Connel, Molly Shannon, Kate Walsh

Most of us stopped caring after Scary Movie 2 (some after the first one!) and so we wonder out loud: “Who the fuck in Hollywood thinks we want to see more of this shit!”

Meant to be a parody on the scarily effective and fun Scream films as well as other like Sixth Sense (all good horror/thriller films in their own right), Scary Movie had some fun moments. Sadly the fun moments have all gone in this fifth iteration of the franchise. No Anna Faris, no great parodies (partly because there are no great horror genre films anymore), no sexy moments and lacklustre laughs.

Sure the kick-off with Charlie Sheen and Lindsay Lohan in bed together (doing nothing remotely sexy) is worth a chuckle. Charlie Sheen parties – yes. Linsay Lohan is a bad driver – yes. Can we move on now?

We do, to Dan Sanders (Simon Rex) and his wife Jody (Ashley Tisdale) who adopt Dan’s brother’s wild child kids who have been raised by a ghostly mother. A parody of producer Guillermo Del Toro’s less-than-chilling MAMA. This part is nicely done in its imitation. Then of course you can’t get away from Paranormal Activity. Which in Scary Movie 5 is basically the time indicator on the camera and a Rec light and time-lapse frames. The other movies that get parodied are: Sinister (far from scary, even the original isn’t), Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Black Swan (this parody is a bit fun), Cabin In The Woods and Inception (how is that a scary movie?).

If you like watching infants being burnt, thrown about, punched and mutilated then you’ll love Scary Movie 5. Well there’s always an audience for anything, right?

I smirked once maybe twice but what boggled me was while they did manage to weave the different movies nicely into a seamless timeline, they had no creativity when it came to the gags, the jokes, the parody, the sexual overtones that made Scary Movie a relatively cult film. I’m sorry, having Snoop Dogg in a cameo does not give the film any slutty appeal. Pamela Anderson and Carmen Electra, that’s what they forgot. Megan Fox would have been superb in the film; she’d even have acted a bit.

That being said, Simon Rex and Ashley Tisdale actually do their bits pretty well considering it’s all basically vulgar and senseless slapstick drivel. There are extra scenes at the end of the film and one bonus scene after the end credits but I’m guessing most of the audience will slip out in the interval.

Scary Movie 5 is lazy and below mediocre. At least 10 per cent of that can be blamed on the formulaic and trite scary movies that are being churned out nowadays replete with the same old clichés: haunted house, scary little girl and contorted woman with long hair.