By Geno McGahee
The 1980s were a great time for horror. The very early nineties still had that 80’s feel to it and you could find a good slasher every once in a while, which is what I thought SCARY MOVIE might have been. It had a great 80’s look and feel to it, and it didn’t have any of the Wayans brothers, thankfully.
The film immediately follows a popular horror formula. It takes place on Halloween night and involves an escaped mental patient. Sound familiar? OK, it’s not original, but that’s alright. It’s better than alright. I don’t mind knockoffs of popular films if they are done right and different enough to stand apart from the original.
Warren (John Hawkes) has issues. He is geeky, paranoid, and afraid of his own shadow. Despite his anxiety and overall social problems, he does seem to have a popular friend that hooks him up with a hot chick to attend this haunted house at a carnival. Unfortunately, it doesn’t go well for Warren. The trio keeps finding reasons to laugh at him. They’re not the only ones though. There is a bearded guy in the crowd that laughs and points at Warren throughout the movie. It was pretty amusing.
Warren learns that there is an escaped mental patient and becomes convinced that he is loose at the carnival and hiding in the haunted house. He goes into survival mode, and the movie does start to suggest that he is right. It began to capture that 80’s slasher vibe, but as soon as it got close, it lost it. There was little focus in this film beyond the first 20 minutes. It started off well, but became a slow and confused dance until the ending.
Warren is being hunted by the killer, or so he thinks, and begins fighting back, chopping off his hand and then shooting him. He escapes the haunted house and the cops are waiting for him. It turns out that the killer never made it to the carnival and Warren had just killed the sheriff and chopped the hand off of one of the haunted house employees. Even when informed of this, Warren smiles. He believes that he stopped the bad guy.
SCARY MOVIE was a tease. It started out in slasher style and ran out of steam quickly. It was incredibly slow and ended in a way that will not satisfy any horror fan. I cannot recommend this.
Rating: 3/10 – I liked the first 20 minutes.
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