By Melissa Antoinette Garza
I had wanted to rent this since I had seen the trailer on Hulu. Though the content didn’t impress me and looked quite bad, the premise was intriguing. The entire concept was to mimic Scooby-Doo. It was intended to be a dark parody aimed at adults who enjoyed the cartoon as a child. If done correctly, this could have been a fun parody that poked fun at the Mystery Inc. gang while paying homage to them. It had the potential of being an over-the-top horror movie with wit and charm the likes of Club Dread (2004).
My husband Stephen had no interest in seeing it. He rarely tries to talk me out of anything I want to watch but he was looking through the Redbox attempting to find anything else. This is a guy who is usually willing to sit through the worst of the worst. Still, he had been annoyed at the recent horror films that mimicked or showed similarities to Scooby-Doo and absolutely detested the preview.
His dislike for this genre began with The Cabin in the Woods (2012). Though, I loved that film and gave it a stellar review, Stephen was less than impressed. He didn’t hate the movie and even enjoyed the scene with all of the monsters. Still, he felt that the characters were purposely designed to be reminiscent of the Mystery Inc. gang. Personally, my favorite among the group in the film was the stoner Marty (Fran Kranz). Steve felt that the actor intentionally spoke and dressed like Shaggy. As a result, Marty was Steve’s least liked character.
My initial reservation was that the film would wink too much at the camera and that the fourth wall would be broken in every scene. Basically, I didn’t want to watch something like Scary MoVie (2013) or A Haunted House (2013). I’ve been avoiding those like the plague and didn’t want to be tricked into watching a modern parody film.
To its credit it didn’t take that route, but there were similarities between the two sub-genres. First, there was no structure to the film. Instead it felt like short and poorly written sketches that wanted to be scary, but failed in every attempt.
I do believe the creators of this movie tried. It seemed genuine enough but it was genuinely awful. It was really the equivalent of Scooby-Doo adult fan-fiction.
There really isn’t any major introduction into the movie other than this gang is trying to gain money by being paranormal investigators. There are those who don’t believe in ghosts among the gang like the Velma wanna-be and then those convinced there are supernatural things that go bump in the night.
The guy pretending to be Fred is a jerk to the woman, who is basically doing a slutty Daphne impression, right after they have sex because she had cheated on him sometime before.
None of this really clicks with the rest of the movie or matters to any degree. Nor does the weird immediate romance that brews between faux Shaggy and sexy Velma-girl.
It’s just a bad film. Skip this one.
Scared Stiff Rating: 2.5/10
