The Scary Movie franchise is officially back after 13 years — but critics are suggesting that the beloved horror satire series shouldn’t have returned at all.
With a brutal 32 percent score on the review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes, panned early reviews have started to roll in ahead of the June 5 premiere of Scary Movie 6 (officially titled just Scary Movie).
The Scary Movie franchise is a series of comedy movies satirizing the IP of popular horror movies, The rebooted chapter, the first one since 2013, reunited the original Core Four cast of Marlon Wayans, Shawn Wayans, Anna Faris and Regina Hall to spoof the last decade of horror movies that have come out since the last Scary Movie, including hits like 2019 film Ma, 2022 favorite M3GAN, and 2025 blockbusters Weapons and Sinners.
However, the impressive lineup of references apparently did not stop viewers from being largely disappointed in what early reviews are describing as a predictable plot and some outdated jokes, even though the goofy franchise first became famous for its meta humor, distasteful references and absurdist gags.
At the time of writing, the film sits at 37 on Metacritic — which is generally unfavorable — with an average score of 3.0 on Letterboxd. Although the critics’ reviews have not yet been counted for the Rotten Tomatoes score, the R-rated comedy can be expected to fall flat in the eyes of the reviewers if the response to early screenings are any indication.
“Scary Movie 2026’s joke success rate is unfortunately on the low side, feeling like maybe 3 or 4 out of every 10 jokes hit the mark,” one Rotten Tomatoes user wrote on the site. Another called the movie “A dreadful reboot that stumbles through tired, miserable ideas for comedy with no invention and little enthusiasm.”
A third person added on Rotten Tomatoes, “The film is really just an excuse to string together a bunch of cinematic in-jokes, meaning it lives or dies on the strength of its sketches. The result is a slow death that drags even at 96 minutes.”
The letdown reviews come after Wayans, who co-created the franchise with his brothers and who stars as Shorty, warned that the sequel could “offend people” due to the writers vowing to hold nothing back when working on the new material.
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“It’s how we always do it,” the actor told Entertainment Weekly. “We just want to make everybody laugh, and we don’t care if you’re sensitive. Even sensitive people need to laugh at themselves.”
He said: “Just know that we’re not just laughing at you, you get the chance to laugh at others.”
Scary Movie is in theaters Friday with a runtime of 95 minutes.