The Scary Movie franchise is a popular series of comedy films created by the Wayans brothers, known for parodying popular contemporary horror.
Ahead of the release of Scary Movie 6 later this year, Film News Blitz’s Darshan Kaur Gill ranks all the movies from worst to best.
5. ‘Scary Movie 5’ (2013)
The movie is objectively the worst film in the series, with the jokes feeling lazy, predictable and hollow.
Overly reliant on pop culture references, the film feels less like a sharp parody and more like a series of disconnected sketches, lacking any of the charm of the previous entries in the franchise.
4. ‘Scary Movie 2’ (2001)
The second movie in the franchise used the same crude, gross-out comedy that made the original stand out, leaning into it even harder.
The biggest issue the movie had was that it doubled down on the shock humour used in the first film without improving the quality of the jokes, making it feel forced and repetitive.
3. ‘Scary Movie 4’ (2006)
A continuation of the style shift introduced in the third film, Scary Movie 4 uses the same rapid-fire gag structure, something that makes it less memorable than its predecessor.
The jokes, every few seconds, can be clever or deliberately stupid, with less reliance on the crude shock humour that defined the first film.
The plot is barely there, and with the fast-paced jokes feeling more like throwaways than memorable setpieces, the movie doesn’t reach the same level of consistency and originality as Scary Movie 3.
2. ‘Scary Movie 3’ (2003)
This movie was the first of the series to be directed by David Zucker, taking a different approach from the earlier films.
Instead of pure shock comedy, Zucker shifted the humour toward rapid-fire gags and deadpan delivery, something that worked well thanks to the visual gags and structured jokes.
The movie is sillier than it is scary, making it one of the better entries in the series.
1. ‘Scary Movie’ (2000)
The first Scary Movie examined why the films they parodied – Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer – were successful and why they worked, and looked to replicate that in a humorous way.
The movie’s biggest strength was its absurdity and its willingness to just make fun of the ridiculousness of contemporary horror films.
It wasn’t just a bunch of skits patched together, but rather a movie that had one functional plot throughout, initiating a long legacy for the franchise.
Scary Movie 6 is in cinemas from 5 June 2026.
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