Fourths Of July: SCARY MOVIE 4 (2006)

A Beautiful Mess

The beginning of the end of summer marks the start of the spookiest time of year for many people including myself. For every person celebrating Christmas in July, there is another overly excited individual breaking out the jack-o-lanterns and decorative cobwebs in preparation for All Hallows’ Eve. As far as I can remember, Halloween never came soon enough; I fondly recall secretly watching the SCARY MOVIE series with my best friend at the time—to the utmost annoyance of my mother. She, unfortunately, was assigned the task of dealing with her petrified child who had no tolerance for horror regardless of how spoofed and unserious the content was. I had a blast revisiting the fourth installation of this iconic series, more fun than I thought I would if I’m being completely honest. My only insecurity when tuning in to the movie was whether the style of humor would be too dissimilar to my personal taste.

I was half right, for every joke I rolled my eyes at there was a component to the film that made me want to look more into the production of the parody classic. This isn’t to say SCARY MOVIE 4 is a cinematic marvel, quite the opposite, but the very things people critique about the film are what I find so interesting and worth waffling over.

A popular critique of the movie is that the plot is amorphous with events happening arbitrarily. I don’t disagree, but I also don’t think that it’s necessarily a flaw.

I personally interpret the plot as its own character, specifically the only character aware of the idea that everything happening is a movie, and therefor is putting others into situations for the entertainment of itself and the audience. The beauty of parody is its ability to completely construe everything about an art form to its most ridiculous while still creating something people would find worth watching.

Now I’m not one to debate whether a piece of media is “good” or “bad” in a technical sense, these labels only limit discourse in my opinion. All I can do is explain my own over analyzation, and why I think it deserves to be on someone’s watch list, even if it’s only ironically.

Narratively zig-zagging in-between different scenes, conflicts, and cut-away gags, the entirety of the film reads as a compilation of some kind rather than a movie with a cohesive flow, and this isn’t an insult. It’s apparent that the SCARY MOVIE franchise, and in particular the Wayans brothers, played a key role in the late ‘00s and early ‘10s parody renaissance, a trend that effected all forms of media entertainment from TV shows and movies to music and literature. With platforms like YouTube becoming another viable stream of entertainment, many creators would spoof what was popular in the mainstream. Not unlike the style of older sketch comedies like In Living Color and The Amanda Show, people were able to create their own unique skits by building off what they already knew to be popular among viewers.

Funnily enough, the same people making a name for themselves on these platforms by poking fun at the programs and flicks they grew up watching, were also creating what major studios and production companies considered to be the more inferior form of entertainment. In the pantheon of parody SCARY MOVIE 4 acts as a point of intersection between old and new age media entertainment. In a beautiful twist of fate, SCARY MOVIE 4 summarized the motion picture’s history of parody comedy by incorporating characteristic hallmarks of every main source of this unique form of storytelling and visual entertainment.

This film wasn’t made to tell a particular story; it was made to make light of all media production, pushing the envelope to see how silly something can get while still being taken seriously as a film. In my own world where everything is poetic and meaningful, I like to imagine the narrative construction of SCARY MOVIE 4 as a nod towards the different elements that came from and were popularized by its predecessors.

SCARY MOVIE 4, like all other entries in the franchise, is an easy watch that is meant to be fun and entertaining. That doesn’t mean that it has nothing of value to add or say about the culture surrounding media and entertainment. For some it’s a nostalgic film that gets them in the headspace of their favorite time of year, for others it’s an eye roller that can be fun to hate-watch with friends, and at the very least it can inspire viewers to watch actually scary movies that are spoofed like THE GRUDGE and THE VILLAGE. Whether you hate to love it or love to hate it, the fourth SCARY MOVIE remains a cult classic for a whole generation of watchers.

SCARY MOVIE 4, like all other entries in the franchise, is an easy watch that is meant to be fun and entertaining.

That doesn’t mean that it has nothing of value to add or say about the culture surrounding media and entertainment.

For some it’s a nostalgic film that gets them in the headspace of their favorite time of year, for others it’s an eye roller that can be fun to hate-watch with friends. At the very least, it can inspire viewers to watch actually scary movies that are spoofed like THE GRUDGE and THE VILLAGE. Whether you hate to love it or love to hate it, the fourth SCARY MOVIE remains a cult classic for a whole generation of watchers.