All Of The Movies Scary Movie 5 Makes Fun Of
Scary Movie V is heating up the Netflix charts lately. The parody franchise has been around since 2000 when it first set out to send up Scream. Along the way, that original film referenced everything from The Matrix to Amistad.
In the intervening years, Scary Movie movies have poked fun at everything from The Exorcist to Million Dollar Baby. Scary Movie V is no exception, which begs the question — did you catch every movie reference Scary Movie V has to offer? Despite the broadness of the humor, some of the references are actually pretty specific.
First let's (try to) explain the plot of Scary Movie V. Jody (Ashley Tisdale) and Dan (Simon Rex) take over guardianship of Dan's long-lost nieces and nephews who have been living in nature under the care of a mysterious ghost named Mama. As Dan works to make his test subject, an ape named Caesar, supernaturally intelligent, Jody tries to become the lead of the Black Swan ballet. Both Dan and Jody have to set aside their distinct plot lines to figure out who Mama is before she pulls the nieces and nephews over a cliff.
If you think you know all the references based on that description, you are very incorrect. Let's break down Scary Movie V, one winking movie reference at a time.
Paranormal (and probably illegal) Activity
The beginning of Scary Movie V alone is stuffed with references. In what is, effectively a separate vignette from the rest of the movie, Charlie Sheen and Lindsay Lohan (playing themselves) are in a bedroom getting ready to have sex. Sheen has cameras everywhere "to make sure a burglar doesn't steal [his] sex tapes." The cameras are a reference to the famous found footage franchise Paranormal Activity.
In addition to the many references to Sheen and Lohan's run-ins with the law, there is also a weird moment in the middle of their sex scene in which a bearded man in a trucker's hat is in the bed. Although it has never been confirmed, the blink-and-you'll-miss-him character bears a striking resemblance to actor Jim Beaver as he appears in the CW horror series Supernatural.
Since (spoilers) both Sheen and Lohan die at the end of this sequence, this is also a reference to the Scream franchise, which opens most of its films with at least one famous actor being brutally slain in the opening scene (see: Drew Barrymore from the original Scream, for example).
Mama and a Cabin in the Woods
In a scene that sets up the actual plot of Scary Movie V, Ja' Marcus (Snoop Dogg) and D'Andre (Mac Miller) are walking through the woods on the look-out for some weed. The two come upon a cabin in the woods. D'Andre is against going into the cabin in the woods, because he says this situation reminds him of "that movie with the cabin the woods."
There's a string of references here as Ja' Marcus rattles off different movies he thinks D'Andre is talking about: Friday the 13th, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Ring, and Blair Witch Project. Scary Movie V is actually referencing The Cabin in the Woods, created by Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard — ironic, since The Cabin in the Woods is, in and of itself, a deconstruction of horror movie tropes, most notably those present in The Evil Dead.
Most importantly, however, D'Andre and Ja' Marcus find three filthy, dirty children in the cabin who are Dan's missing nieces and nephews. This is a reference to Mama, the Andy Muschietti film about a supernatural spirit haunting a family.
Just like in Mama, the three children come under the guardianship of Jody and Dan after a stay in a children's psychiatric center. Fun fact: There's scene in the psychiatric center in which a window is opened to reveal two women taking a shower together. While not a reference to any specific film, "two women taking a shower together" was a mainstay of virtually every Z-grade, straight-to-video 80's horror movie.
Black Swan vs. The Planet of the Apes
Dan works in a laboratory where he's developing a serum to make apes smarter. He even has a an ape test subject names Caesar. This is a reference to the Rise of the Planet of the Apes. And just like in that reboot to the Planet of the Apes franchise, Scary Movie V eventually ends with apes taking over human civilization. Yes, despite the fact that Dan and Jody save their adopted children from parody Mama, they could not save anyone from ape-ocalypse.
Jody, meanwhile, is distressed about raising up haunted kids she didn't want in the first place, so naturally she dips back into her former career as a ballet dancer. As former prima ballerina Heather Daltry (Molly Shannon) steps aside for a new star, Jody finds herself in direct competition with Kendra Brooks (Erica Ash) over who will take the lead and become the Black Swan.
Hopefully, you can keep up with the subtle nuances of Scary Movie V, but, just in case you haven't — this is a parody of the film Black Swan. There's a lot of doing drugs, ladies kissing, betrayal, and dramatically following a character from behind with the camera. During the sex scene, someone appears as Leonardo DiCaprio's Jack from Titanic (complete with yelling, "I'm the king of the world") and the talking teddy bear, Ted, also gets involved. It's quite an event!
Also, during Jody's ballet try-outs, a janitor named Ira (Usher) appears and dances with his mop like Fred Astaire, which is a surprisingly highbrow reference to Royal Wedding.
Evil Dead, Inception, and ... Fifty Shades of Grey?
The jokes at other films' expense come fast and furious in the final act of Scary Movie V. What you basically need to know is that Jody and Kendra team up to go to the cabin in the woods to find an evil book in order to send Mama packing.
As you might expect, they encounter a number of young people at the cabin who become possessed by the evil book. They spit blood, they chop off their own limbs, and they essentially replay the events of the Evil Dead remake in comical fast-forward.
One of the other ways Jody tries to figure out what to do is by enlisting the help of a returning Leonardo DiCaprio look-alike to help her delve into her surrogate children's dreams. The dream sequence (which involves fake breasts and crotches on fire) is clowning on the film Inception, and just like Inception's dream within a dream plot, there's a parody within the parody when Jody finds herself dreaming about Jerry O'Connell in a Fifty Shades of Grey sequence. If you really want your mind blown, the very appearance is a riff on the fact that he was in Scream 2.
Meanwhile, Dan is offered assistance from their former housekeeper, Maria (Lidia Porto). In what is one of the most left-field parodies, Maria tries to convince to Dan to eat a pie, a hot dog, and a banana all made of human feces. This is a reference to the fecal pie in the film adaptation of The Help.
From Insidious to Shawshank Redemption
Jokes at the expensive of other films appear for brief moments throughout the film, and some of them don't quite fit into the narrative so much as they just happen, but you have a right to know about every reference, so you're going to hear about every last one of them.
A psychic named Blaine (Katt Williams) briefly appears early on to discover what exactly is haunting Dan and Jody. He nearly chokes using a gas mask to investigate, which is a reference to Lin Shaye's character Elise Rainier from the Insidious franchise.
At one point, Dan discovers one of the children popping out of a cardboard box dressed as Honey Boo Boo. Don't let the reality show reference distract you, though, because the whole "kid popping out of a cardboard box" riff is from C. Robert Cargill's new horror classic, Sinister.
At a ballet recital, we see someone dressed as Madea, which is, as you might have guessed, a reference to all of Tyler Perry's Madea movies.
And finally, the narrator for the entirety of Scary Movie V is a sound-a-like for Morgan Freeman, a reference to his narration from The Shawshank Redemption.
There you have it: Every movie Scary Movie V makes fun of. That's 24 separate movies clowned on, by our count!