STARS : Shawn Wayans, Marlon Wayans, Anna Faris, Regin Hall, Christopher Kennedy Masterson, James Woods and Tim Curry

I was never a fan of the first Scary Movie and when I heard that they were releasing another one, my first thought was “Why?”

The film sets pace for what you will expect right from the start. We see a family singing and HAVING fun, next we see a young woman ala The Exorcist, spewing stuff and profanities, and so begins the satire of this film.

We return to the life of our original heroine Cindy (Faris), who is now at University and enjoying her life, well pretty much anyway. Her and a SELECT GROUP of students have been selected to take part in an experiment on insomnia, ala The Haunting, and go to a secluded location, in a house, with an equally creepy care taker. One by one the students notice strange things are happening in the house. At this point the movie satires, The House on Haunted Hill, Poltergeist, What Lies Beneath, Hollowman and more, poking fun at various sequences from each of them. Now it is a race against time to control the looming evil and escape the house before they all die, or something like that.

With interesting one-liners and rather disgusting scenes with added fart and sex jokes, this is pure satire, similar to the first movie, but not as funny as your Flying High variety. Much like the first movie, no horror film is left unchecked and it is what you would expect from the likes of the Wayans brothers, with some drug and toilet humour chucked in for good measure. Other scene steals from other films, include Charlie’s Angels, Hannibal and What Lies Beneath.

Marlon Brando was originally going to star as the priest, at the beginning of the film, which ended up going to James Woods. The reason cited was illness but I prefer to thing that regardless of his age Marlon Brando, still knows a stinker of a script when he sees it.

Unfortunately, the wonderfully talented Tim Curry, was not utilised nearly enough, which is an absolute shame. Not even HAVING the cast do homage to the Rocky Horror Picture show, would have tipped the film into the watchable category. Let’s do the Time Warp, again!

Watch It If You Enjoyed : Scary Movie. Now who’d have thought?

Verdict : Abysmal and Unecessary

THE EXTRAS

* Behind the Scenes Featurette (7:49 mins): Interviews with Cast and Crew, including Shawn, Marlon and Keenan Ivory Wayans, Regina Hall, Chris Elliott, David Cross, Tim Curry, Anna Faris and James Woods. As well as production scenes and how many of the stunts and effects were created.

* Alternate & Deleted Scenes (42 minutes) : There are 22 deleted scenes in this section including 3 altenate endings. Some of these are very funny and could well have been left in the film given the 80 minute running time.

* Still Gallery : There are about 100 stills, in colour and black & white, all production shots, from various scenes with the cast and the set up of the film.

* Special Effects Tour with Lou Carlucci (5:30 mins): Lou takes us through the special effects of the movie, how the various items are created, including the bird poop. The wheelchair gags, the vomit gags, including some gags, that weren’t in the final cut

* Here Kitty, Kitty (1:45 mins): A small featurette of the cats scene, how the cats were created and used in the fights.

* Scary Effects (2:02 mins): A feature on many of the special effects, including glass breaking scenes, the creepy skeleton, the ghost sex scenes, with the spinning room and Tori Spelling.

* Behind the Make up with Barry Koper (4:04 mins): Make up featurette for scenes, including the Hannibal brain eating scene, the Exorcist scene, and how the ghost worked, with the amazing definition.

CONCLUSION

As you may have guessed, I’m not a fan of this film. It does have a few amusing moments but overall was an exercise in futility and non necessity.

With thanks to Buena Vista, Scary Movie 2 is finally completed its stint as a “Rental Only” and is available to buy now