Scary Movie (or Scary Movie 6) is a zany, fairly hilarious return to the Scary Movie franchise from its original creators, the Wayans family. To be entirely frank, this new spoof, though leaps and bounds more valuable than the franchise’s awkwardly amateurish stand-alone venture in Scary Movie 5, falls in the same league as the original. It’s well performed, solidly shot and scored, and, more often than not, funny and occasionally clever in its many cameos and pop-culture references. That said, it also lacks substance, legit character work, a strong underlying narrative, or any legitimizable criticism, thanks to its own lack of provocation.

Scary Movie 6 primarily spoofs Scream (2022) and Scream VI, seeing a new, slapstick-enthused Ghostface return to terrorize. 26 years after a masked serial killer slaughtered many of small-town American gal Cindy Campbell’s (Anna Faris) friends—though not without leaving a few survivors like the cheeky stoner, Shorty (Marlon Wayans)—this new Ghostface threatens Scary Movie veterans, their young adult kids, and the same small town it all started in. With other legacy characters returning, like Cindy’s best friend and Shorty’s twice-killed sister, Brenda Meeks (Regina Hall), new faces and old victims must team up to fight this new killer in the best way they know how: with weed, one-liners, brainless plans, and cultural references, and just a bit of homage-stuffed action.

Everyone going into the newest Scary Movie—established film critics, Scary Movie diehards, and ordinary newcomers—should expect one thing and one thing only: sketch comedy-centric silliness loyal to what made the first Wayans’ ventures so much raunchy fun. None of these films are exactly brilliant; the ’00 original holds the franchise’s highest average scores across the board, with a 52% from Rotten Tomatoes critics and a 48 on Metacritic because it, too, lacks anything beyond spoof material. For that, Scary Movie 6 is exactly the same, for better and worse. 6 pokes a lot of fun at legacy sequels and requels (“rebootquel,” as Brenda’s non-binary kid, Dei Meeks (Sydney Park), calls it), but it doesn’t do much to deconstruct or criticize. Why do that when viewers could laugh their asses off at a two-minute animated music video of Shorty singing about his love of the devil’s lettuce?

Its most poignant components, actually, come when the movies aren’t referenced at all. Seeing Shorty on the other side of a Twitch stream, being his goofy self with a group of others as a live chat feed sprawls the right of their webcammed image—topped off by a wacky but stream-fitting cameo from the famous Kai Cenat—demonstrates the unseriousness of online gaming and streaming culture whilst delivering a satisfying kill from a high Ghostface. It even attempts to make fun of serious issues like that of transgender rights through the inclusion of one of the OG characters’ trans son, who tells his own dad “You hit like a pussy,” before fully striking him across the jaw and entering school with the finger as a departing gift—solidifying trans people’s existence while other bits of the film make fun of pronouns and reactions to them. Slightly culturally reflective moments like this litter 6, though maybe not as sharply as the original or the best of the David Zucker-directed Scary Movie 3 and 4. Having the entire gang enthusiastically back together to reclaim their stakes in this long-running franchise also ensures 6’s ensemble remains dumbly appealing, even if flat.

The jokes, nostalgia, and mild cultural points only go so far, though. 6 refuses to grow past the franchise’s most consistent and largest issue: there’s no integrity to any of it. Whether it be the Wayans, Zucker, or the unspeakable fifth entry, Scary Movie has never used parody for anything beyond its own sake. Narrative absence, flat characters, and the flat one-third of 6’s jokes aside, it’s hard to see much point beyond the chuckles. Sure, conservatives are cowardly about the wrong things, liberals are oversensitive and occasionally aloof, people make weird decisions, and franchises tire themselves out, but… so what? What avenues are there for change? As Cindy upgrades from her 2018 Halloween Laurie Strode-esque attire to a jet black, slicked back action suit and hairstyle akin to Ana De Armas’s character in Ballerina (who the cast would mention, “but nobody saw it!”) to take back the franchise for the original heroes, it seems this ironically continuous horror-parody series is gearing for more of the same, and that’s a shame. Instead of using the Wayans’ return and the original’s spirit and cast to evolve into something better than Scary’s past, they continue recycling material, mixing in too-subtle allusions to American life in 2026 to provoke much backbone in viewers’ grins. But perhaps that’s precisely the point: dumb, cozy familiarity is indeed comforting as the world darkens under the greedy choices of those in power, and Scary Movie was always meant to do just that. More clarity and depth would still be hugely beneficial, though.

For longtime fans, Scary Movie 6 is as hoped: a brand-new barrel of references, amusement, and upgraded sets and costumes for the original cast to reunite and stupidly fight evil in. For those looking for a dumb comedy, Scary Movie will likely bring a lot of joy. But for anyone looking for, well, anything a basic movie should deliver beyond the jokes and performances, Scary Movie is just a requel to an already unfunny, unimpactful parody franchise. It’s good, usually hilarious background noise at a party, but not much else.

In theaters now—get tickets @ Alamo Drafthouse Seaport, Apple Cinemas Cambridge, Cinema Salem, Landmark’s Kendall Square, Patriot Cinemas, Showcase Cinemas, and all local AMCs