Scary Movie 4 -- 2006 -- PG-13

I watched the Unrated version on video that probably included more profanity, I'm guessing.

This one was a vast improvement over the last two pieces of crap put out in this franchise. Scary Movie 2 was shameful and Scary Movie 3 only moderately improved on it, since it was not possible to get worse (knock on wood). The "fourth and final installment of the trilogy" was much, much funnier and though it depended on the spoofing of other films for its humor, it did a far better job than it has ever done before. I have seen nearly all of the films it spoofed, so very little was lost on me.

One of the weaknesses of 3 was that it tried to do too much, and when I saw a dual War of the Worlds/Grudge thing going on, I was immediately concerned that this one might repeat the mistakes of its predecessor. My fears were abated, however, when the WOTW battle began, the Grudge plot was transitioned into something more. It was also amusing to me that Bill Pullman, who was in the Grudge, played a warped version of his role from that film.

While definitely a stronger entry this time with more laughs, the storyline still suffers from its reliance on spoof material and sight gags. A lot of things happen just for the sake of there being a joke in there somewhere, which hurts it when the joke doesn't come off as funny.

That being said, the overall story was actually pretty good. It had some ok development among the characters with our War of the Worlds characters actually experiencing growth during the course of the film. Our lead, Cindy, doesn't really grow that much at all, though.

So in the end, we have a far better offering than the previous ones have been. I'm not sure how much better it could have been considering the dependance on previously existing films.