The reality that it’s been a quarter of a century since I saw “Scary Movie” is a little much to digest. I was in between my junior and senior year of high school when this one hit theaters and I’m almost certain I saw it a couple of times during it’s initial run. Some of the love for that movie I think was due to it’s general popularity at the time because for a number of years I don’t remember actually having a strong affinity for it. I will say I’ve come back around since then. I have the first three in that franchise on blu ray in my collection. Obviously this is a backdrop for watching “A Haunted House” tonight but the reason I’m setting it up this way is because Marlon Wayans was infinitely more entertaining in this movie than he was in any of the Scary Movie entries. I fully understand that this movie is humor of probably the lowest order. But it’s still humor. It’s still funny. Critics completely dismissed this movie, rightfully so. But it made $60M on a $2.5M budget. People found it entertaining. I’m just glad I finally watched it.
This movie has been sitting out there for 13 years at this point. I’ve been relatively aware of it but it was never one I ever found myself in the mood for when scrolling through options of what to watch. I knew it was a “horror comedy” but Marlon Wayans had lost a lot of credibility as far as being actually funny to me. He really is a great comedian. But his performances in things like “Little Man” and “White Chicks” was just so over the top that he just wasn’t appealing. And I won’t say that I was won over by something leading up to this movie. I simply turned on HBO tonight and decided I was going to pick a movie from their catalog. That’s been kind of the modus operandi for the last few days as it stands when choosing movies for myself. Pick a platform and watch a movie there. It really is nicer than surfing for forever looking for something that jumps out at me. Being remanded to horror titles and in this case the catalog that HBO currently advertises, my options were limited. I thought about going classic tonight. There’s plenty of old movies that I was almost enticed by in the end. But I came back to A Haunted House in the end because I wanted something light and fun. I’ve got two more nights of this left and I’m sure I’ll indulge in classic horror in those entries but tonight I wanted one last foray into the crossover between horror and comedy and Marlon won out. But I think it worked really well.
I have to say that one of my favorite things about this movie is the ensemble cast. We have our two main protagonists who are mimicking the couple from Paranormal activity. That’s what was great about this movie over Scary Movie. That franchise really went out of their way to try and parody as many things as they could. It worked well in the way it was presented. But I appreciated that we really just zeroed in on Paranormal Activity and made this pretty much a straight parody of that film. I know the supporting cast wasn’t particularly A level celebrities but between David Koechner, Andy Daly, Cedric the Entertainer and Nick Swardson, there was a cornucopia of comedic stylings all coming together in a horrific horn of plenty…of laughs. Nailed it. Each of these players in the film had their role to play and they did it well. Koechner played his desperate old white guy who doubled as a ghost hunter and desperately wanted to be in the inner circle. Daly was a tenacious swinger with no boundaries perpetually trying to play it all off as a misunderstanding. Cedric was the hood rich priest with expertise in the church and the penitentiary. And Swardson was a nerdy psychic who hadn’t fully come out of the closet yet. Being able to ping pong off scenes that played off Malcolm and Kisha primarily to each of the sequential vignettes with these side characters really kept the pacing on point despite it being an incredibly dumb and degenerate comedy. But they knew what they needed to do and each scene really hit it’s note well and we moved on accordingly.
The other part of this that I enjoyed was that it was just nothing but sophomoric humor. It’s poop jokes, stoner gags, and all sorts of things that people seem to think aren’t funny anymore, but definitely laugh at anyways. That’s what was fun about this movie. It was completely irreverent and it just sort of rolled around in that fact for 90 minutes and was unapologetic for doing so. That’s how these comedies used to be made. The idea that we needed to or even actually did evolve beyond this brand of humor is ridiculous. Because this brand of humor is truly not at anyone’s expense. I’m not going to turn this into some soapbox for the return of old school comedy. This movie is from 2012. We were still actually, publicly laughing at stuff like this back then. And some of us still do. It not because of any manner of phobia or problematic ideology. It’s dumb funny. That’s it. They clearly poke significant humor at the dumb white guy. Koechner is 100% down for that because it’s funny. I could easily be offended at a number of things. But Marlon, who also co-wrote the movie, understood that we are going to make fun of everyone, much like Trey Parker and Matt Stone do on South Park. Pointing the finger at one group and singling them out in a mean spirited way isn’t humor. Laughing at people for being people, is funny. That’s what makes this movie funny. It takes so many different little idiosyncrasies of human beings and applies a very generous helping of hyperbole to elevate the big, dumb humor. It’s funny because everybody gets to be an idiot sometimes. We look in the mirror and laugh at ourselves so everybody gets a turn being poked fun at. And this movie did it wonderfully.
The thing about a movie like this is it not that there’s a lack of bad things to say about it, but realistically I’m pretty sure the movie knows it’s not good in a genuine sense and just leans into being ok with that. The intent was to make people laugh. It wasn’t to shine a light on some cultural injustice. It wasn’t looking to bring awareness to a marginalized people. It’s as far from Oscar bait as you can get. They knew from the first scene to the last that there are going to be poop jokes, racial tension, sexual humor and adult themes (I threw that one in there just for fun) and so they were starting out with a template to be as dumb as they wanted to. I still bust out the Jackass movies from time to time when I just want to laugh at the stupidest things in the world because they’ll always be funny. If I want something nuanced and interesting, I’m not heading towards this movie and everyone involved knows it. It’s like when two people are on an elevator, everyone knows who farted. It’s baked into the narrative of this movie and I like the social contract that exists there. What’s really nice about it is you can complain about this or that in the movie but nobody cares. They knew what they were making. Sure they didn’t want to just make some huge pile of crap, though Marlon Wayans literally does that in the movie, so I suppose they kind of did in a way. But they wanted to make something entertaining and when you click play, you’re signing a waiver that takes away your right to really complain about a lot going on in this movie. If you didn’t know from any of the very accessible warning signs going into this movie that it was exactly as advertised then you missed all of the off ramps and that’s kind of your own fault.
The rating part of this movie is the only time I really have to be judicial with this movie. In the right circumstances, this movie is probably an 8 or a 9. If you’re looking for a fantastic parody of Paranormal Activity with all the ingredients I’ve laid out already, you’re going to laugh your butt off and enjoy the crap out of this movie. There’s a number of times I legitimately laughed out loud. But in all fairness, this movie is probably deserving of it’s IMDb score of 5.1 It’s over the hump for sure but you can’t honestly give it significant credit for being 90 minutes of big dumb funny. That’s why I put the caveat that if you’re truly in the mood for this movie, you’re going to love it and you’ll easily give it high marks. But in the light of day, it’s passable and that’s that. So I do have to maintain some level of manufactured professionalism or I’ll lose all credibility, of which there is very little left as it stands. But this Halloween season, if you are ok with the kind of humor I’ve detailed and you need a little scary movie palate cleanser, I wholeheartedly recommend this one. So now, with just two more days left to go, the end is in sight. I’ll be back with some kind of legitimate horror movie tomorrow night. What movie that will be, I have no idea so we’ll just have to wait until then. So for now I’ll say good night and I’ll catch you on the flip side.
