By far and away the worst of the series

The first Scary Movie was very entertaining if rather mindless, 2 is uneven though much better than what is often said about it, 3 was a mixed bag and 4 was poor and until now was the worst of the four. This fifth entry was just awful with no redeeming values, the only movie of the series to be on the same level as rubbish like Disaster Movie and Epic Movie and actually comes dangerously close to being even worse. Visually it's cheap, with the way it's shot and edited strongly reminiscent of a poorly done direct-to-video movie and that is the same with the sets. The soundtrack is generic and like a noisy music video with a lot thrown in for the sake of it and very little adds anything to what is going on. The dialogue toe-curlingly bad in how inane and excessively vulgar it is. Nothing about it is funny or witty, much of it is immature and insulting, if the writers were clueless as to what was funny that comes through loud and clear. The funniest it gets? "Help, there's a mad demon in my house", and if you're thinking that that is also stupid, you're right, it is. There is not much story here to speak of, it was just an excuse seemingly to cobble together genre send-ups and parodies and the sheer idiocy only increases. And none of these are funny, some of the gags are drawn out to an unbearable degree, the ones sending up horrors like Evil Dead have nothing atmospheric, scary or remotely creepy about them and the bulimia and pregnancy gags were tasteless(and not mildly, this is more above-borderline offensive, in quite some while no other movie has evoked a reaction as extreme as this). There's even a surreal spoof on Fifty Shades of Grey, which came across as out of place. The acting is awful, and even that is an insult to the word awful. It wasn't a problem that the original cast weren't there, what was was that none of the actors had any spirit and energy to their performances, the few actors who do have some talent are wasted and some overact, Ashley Tisdale being the worst offender. Charlie Sheen and Lindsay Lohan send themselves and their tabloid reps embarrassingly, the Paranormal Activity spoof wasn't scary or halfway amusing in the slightest. In conclusion, a complete mess and by far the worst of an overall hit-and-miss movie series. 1/10 Bethany Cox

1/10