The Definitive Guide to Living in the Capital , Cairo , Egypt

Scary Movie 5 – aka Scary MoVie – marks the latest and slightly belated entry to one of the laziest spoof series in the history of cinema.  The franchise, which continues down a shameless road of riff-raff, turns its attention to recent box office hits such as Mama, Black Swan, Sinister,  The Cabin in the Woods, Evil Dead and of course, Paranormal Activity. 

The premise hasn’t changed one bit, but the outlandish formula that may have once incited a few laughs – or at least some guilty chuckles – has finally reached a point of no return: rock bottom.

Scary Movie 5’s so-called plot focuses on Jody (Tisdale) and Dan (Rex); a young married couple who have come to care for three young girls who, after the tragic disappearance of their father – Dan’s older brother – spend most of their time living in ‘the cabin in the woods’. They are feral and wild, and continue to creep everyone out with constant references to someone called ‘Mama’.  

Keen to rid the house of any unwanted demons, Jody and Dan wire up their house with multiple cameras – à la Paranormal Activity.  Meanwhile, the couple struggle to tend to their careers; Dan keeps himself busy researching apes at a scientific facility run by scary boss, Martin (Crews), while Jody tries to resurrect her career as a ballerina – à la, yes you’ve guess it, Black Swan – and auditions for the lead in a production of ‘Swan Lake’, working  opposite pole-dancing ballerina, Kendra (Ash). 

This is the first film in the series that has not been moulded by the hands of original creators, the Wayans Brothers, who declined the invitation to return, and the franchise’s charmingly nutty lead, Anna Faris, who is currently pregnant. Needless to say, the film suffers from both omissions and doesn’t have the foolish charm that made the franchise so popular, showing little-to-no intelligence in its humour.

The plot is incredibly inconsistent and plays out as a series of unconnected set-pieces, each telling their own story, just for the sake of it.  Seriously, how many more Paranormal Activity spoofs do we have to sit through?

Tisdale, who has some pretty big shoes to fill after Farris’ departure, is appalling and she still hasn’t shaken off her Disney roots.  Rex is just as horrendous and although the film has several talented actors at its disposable – Morgan Freeman narrates – none of them are given the right material to work with.  Even cameos by Snoop Dogg, Mike Tyson, Charlie Sheen and Lindsay Lohan all feel like missed opportunities.

Sitting in the wrong side of ridiculous, Scary Movie 5 is unfunny and too on-the-nose – wasting anymore column inches writing about it is infuriating.