Released at the dawn of the new millennium, Scary Movie arrived as a riotous, rapid-fire parody that gleefully skewered late-‘90s horror staples like Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer. Directed by Keenen Ivory Wayans and fronted by a then-rising cast including Anna Faris, Regina Hall, and the Wayans brothers, the film was an immediate box office smash. But a quarter of a century later, it’s clear that this once-popular spoof hasn’t aged gracefully—if it ever stood solidly on two feet to begin with.

At its core, Scary Movie is a barrage of slapstick gags, crass jokes, and references fired at the audience with relentless speed and very little subtlety. Its tagline, “No mercy. No shame. No sequel,” turned out to be only partially true—there were plenty of sequels, and arguably even less shame. But what the film severely lacked then, and even more so now, is wit.

What may have passed for edgy in 2000 now lands with a thud. The humour leans heavily on lazy stereotypes, body shaming, homophobic jabs, and bodily fluids—none of which were especially clever then, and are painfully tone-deaf today. While parody thrives on exaggeration, Scary Movie feels like it’s constantly shouting at the audience, relying on shock value rather than smart satire.

There are some bright spots: Anna Faris proves her comedic chops, and Regina Hall brings impeccable timing and energy to her now-iconic Brenda. But the film’s biggest flaw is its one-note approach—once you’ve seen one riff on a horror cliché, you’ve seen most of them. Rather than building momentum, it becomes a series of increasingly desperate skits stitched together by a threadbare plot.

The Prognosis:

Retrospectively, Scary Movie is more a cultural time capsule than a comedy classic—an emblem of a post-Scream era when horror was ripe for ridicule but rarely treated with nuance. It may have made audiences laugh in 2000, but today it plays more like a relic of cheap laughs and tired punchlines.

For better or worse, it left a legacy, but it’s a legacy that proves not all parody ages with grace. Some just curdle.

• Saul Muerte