Why Becky From A Haunted House 2 Looks So Familiar
In the year 2000, brothers Shawn, Marlon, and Keenan Ivory Wayans collaborated on the horror comedy "Scary Movie." The film is part of a lineage that includes the likes of "Airplane!" and "Hot Shots!" that parody not a single movie but an entire genre, including moments that specifically satirize iconic scenes from popular releases. "Airplane!," for example, was a reaction to a series of disaster movies that were becoming popular in the leadup to its 1980 release. "Scary Movie," meanwhile, was drawing from slasher horror movies primarily released in the nineties.
The success of "Scary Movie" ultimately spawned a minor subgenre of genre-focused comedies, like romantic comedy parody "Date Movie" or the blockbuster parody "Epic Movie." The latter two films, however, no longer involved the Wayans brothers but were rather helmed by Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, who contributed to the script of "Scary Movie."
In 2013, Marlon Wayans returned to the horror parody genre film, sans Friedberg and Seltzer, with the release of "Haunted House," treading similar territory to "Scary Movie" but drawing from more recent horror releases like "Paranormal Activity." The film was successful enough that Wayans starred in a sequel just one year later, in 2014. Among its cast of characters, representative of certain horror archetypes, is Becky, the daughter of Megan (Jaime Pressly), a woman Wayans' character falls for and moves in with near the start of the film. Megan's house turns out to be the titular haunted house. Under its thrall, Becky is obsessed with an old, clearly haunted box for much of the film.
Becky is portrayed by actor Ashley Rickards, whose acting career began when she was a teenager, in the decade prior to the release of "A Haunted House 2."
Rickards was the runaway Sam Walker on One Tree Hill
Ashley Rickards' first acting gig was in a short film titled "Web Journal Now," released in 2006 when she was 14 years old. Arguably her first notable role came just two years later, in 2008, when she began on long-running drama "One Tree Hill" on the CW.
Rickards portrayed Sam Walker, who joined the central cast of characters for and during only the show's sixth season. Walker ends up in the series' Tree Hill location as a runaway after leaving the foster care system in which she was raised for much of her life. In Tree Hill, after something of a contentious first meeting, she ultimately befriends Brooke Davis (Sophia Bush), one of the series' main characters. Brooke eventually decides to raise Sam as her daughter. Given her centrality to Brooke's life, Sam is an important character for much of "One Tree Hill" Season 6. However, at the season's end, Sam decides to find and live with her biological mother, ending her tenure on the series.
Rickards starred in the indie drama Fly Away
In 2011, Ashley Rickards appeared in her first starring role in a feature film as one of the two primary characters in "Fly Away." The film chronicles how a woman named Jeanne (Beth Broderick) raises her autistic daughter Mandy, portrayed by Rickards. The film is something of a slice of life drama, its tensions derived from interpersonal relationships between Jeanne, Mandy, and those outside of their immediate family.
"Fly Away" was well-received by critics at the time of its release, and Rickards' performance in particular was singled out in some reviews as among the film's strengths. In a review for the New York Observer, for example, Rex Reed wrote that "this is a movie worth seeing, if for no other reason than the dramatic intensity Ms. Rickards brings to her character. In a class by herself, she deserves, at the very least, an Oscar nomination." Rickards ultimately won an award for "Best Performance" at the Arizona International Film Festival for her performance in "Fly Away" (via IMDb).
Ashley Rickards was the lead character in Awkward
Also in 2011, the same year as the release of "Fly Away," Rickard began her tenure as Jenna Hamilton, the central character of underrated MTV dramedy "Awkward." In the series' premiere, Jenna attends high school with both a neck brace and a cast on one of her arms. Many of her classmates, viewers find out, believe that her injuries are the result of a failed suicide attempt, which turns out to be entirely untrue. The manner in which the impressions of classmates can shape a high school student's reality in such a way becomes a recurring theme as "Awkward" continues.
Driven in equal parts by the false rumor of her suicide attempt, a secret relationship with one of the most popular boys at her school, and finally by an anonymous letter criticizing her lack of popularity, Jenna adopts a more outgoing persona in an effort to raise her social standing in her high school's hierarchy. The results, as well as the general sorts of dramatic moments intrinsic to the lives of high schoolers, drove "Awkward" over the course of its 89 episodes, until it concluded in 2016.