The reviews split evenly between positive, mixed and negative responses to Scary Movie, with little agreement on how reliably its jokes land. Supporters find it frequently funny, praising the cast’s commitment and Keenen Ivory Wayans’s brisk, light-touch direction. Anna Faris draws particular praise, while even some less enthusiastic critics acknowledge effective slapstick and carefully executed spoofs of familiar scenes. The broadest agreement is that there are laughs here; their frequency is another matter.
Reservations centre on uneven pacing, awkward references and gross-out humour that some find more vulgar than funny. Radio Times also questions the purpose of parodying horror films that already satirise themselves. The spread is wide, running from enthusiastic approval of the gag rate to near-dismissal of the comedy as witless. Notably, the strongly negative Evening Standard still admires the precision of the pastiches, especially those drawing on The Blair Witch Project and The Matrix.