Scary Movie
Teenage girl and her friends receive threatening messages one year after accidentally killing a man in a hit-and-run, as a masked killer begins murdering their classmates one by one while a bumbling local police investigation fails to identify the culprit stalking the small town high school.
Scary Movie — Plot Summary
Halloween Murder
Halloween night. Drew Decker receives a threatening phone call while home alone. A masked killer chases her outside, strips her to her underwear, and stabs her in the breast, removing one of her silicone implants. Her father, distracted while receiving oral sex from his wife in their car, accidentally hits Drew with the vehicle. As she lies injured, the killer fatally stabs her while she looks at her murderer.
The Friend Group
Cindy Campbell meets with her boyfriend Bobby Prinze and their circle of friends: Brenda Meeks, Ray Wilkins, Greg Phillippe, Buffy Gilmore, and Brenda's stoner brother Shorty. News teams, including ambitious reporter Gail Hailstorm, converge on the school following Drew's murder. Gail seduces Buffy's intellectually disabled brother, Special Officer Doofy, a local police officer, to extract information about the investigation.
While in class, Cindy sees the killer watching her through the window before receiving an ominous note. She realizes that Drew was murdered exactly one year after Cindy and her friends accidentally killed a man named David Keegan by hitting him with their car and dumping his body in a lake.
After football practice, Greg discovers a photo of his small penis posted on his locker with the message "I KNOW" written on it. Believing Ray took the compromising photo, Greg angrily confronts him and their friends.
Cindy tells the group about the threatening note, insisting they contact the police about the possible connection to the man they killed. However, Greg beats Cindy instead, fearing that involving police will lead to their imprisonment for the hit-and-run killing.
The Killings Begin
At Buffy's beauty pageant that evening, the killer murders Greg in plain view of the audience. The spectators mistake Buffy's screams and pleas for help as part of her dramatic performance. Buffy eventually wins the pageant and immediately forgets about Greg's death in her excitement.
The killer attacks Cindy while she is home alone. She fights back and the killer retreats when she manages to contact the police. Bobby arrives shortly after and is immediately arrested when a cellphone, knife, and gloves fall out of his pocket—making him the prime suspect. Cindy spends the night at Buffy and Doofy's house for safety, where she receives another threatening call from the killer.
The following day, Bobby is released from jail due to insufficient evidence. While changing in the girls' locker room, Buffy is beheaded by the killer using a meat cleaver.
That night, reporter Gail Hailstorm and her cameraman Kenny go to a popular makeout spot, hoping to film a murder on camera for ratings. After they catch the killer murdering a teenager named Heather, the killer chases them into the woods. Kenny is murdered while Gail escapes. Gail later gives a snot-filled, insincere apology to Kenny's family on camera.
Theater Massacre
Later that night, Ray and Brenda go to the movies to see Shakespeare in Love. While Ray is in the bathroom, the killer stabs him through his ear via a glory hole in a bathroom stall.
The killer then pursues Brenda in the theater. However, before the killer can finish her, angry movie patrons—fed up with Brenda's rude and obnoxious behavior during the film—stab her to death themselves. The audience kills her both to make her stop talking and as punishment for her spoiling multiple films including Shakespeare in Love, Thelma and Louise, The Fugitive, and others.
House Party
Meanwhile, Cindy hosts a house party at her home, hoping that safety in numbers will protect her from the killer. During the party, one of her friends, Tina, is killed while retrieving beer from the garage.
During the party, Cindy and Bobby go upstairs and have sex. Meanwhile, the killer goes to the basement and gets stoned with Shorty and his friends. While high, the killer accidentally kills everyone in the basement except Shorty.
After Cindy and Bobby finish having sex, the killer appears and stabs Bobby before disappearing. Cindy retrieves a gun from a drawer. Bobby, despite being stabbed, follows her downstairs.
Shorty emerges from the basement warning about the killer. Bobby immediately shoots Shorty. Ray then arrives, revealing he survived the bathroom attack. He is carrying a voice changer device.
The Reveal
Bobby and Ray confront Cindy in the kitchen, announcing their plan. They reveal they are merely copying the real killer and only intend to murder Cindy and her father. Bobby admits to being gay and Ray's secret lover. Ray angrily denies the relationship.
The plan immediately backfires. Ray becomes enraged when Bobby mentions that Ray's favorite television show, The Wayans Bros., was canceled after five seasons without getting a proper final episode. In his fury over the cancellation, Ray stabs and kills Bobby.
The real killer abruptly arrives at the house. The killer murders Ray, then fights Cindy until she manages to kick him out a window. However, when the police arrive, the killer's body has vanished, leaving Cindy with no proof.
True Identity
At the police station, Cindy and the sheriff investigate the killer's identity. They discover that the killer was not David Keegan—the man the teenagers accidentally killed a year earlier seeking revenge from beyond the grave.
The killer's true identity is revealed to be Doofy, Buffy's supposedly intellectually disabled brother and the local police officer. Doofy had been faking his mental disability the entire time as a cover for his murders. He has escaped with reporter Gail Hailstorm after removing his disguise and revealing his deception.
The sheriff and Cindy find Doofy's discarded backpack in the street containing his mask and knife—proof of his guilt but too late to stop his escape. Cindy begins screaming in frustration and horror, but is suddenly hit by a car.
Scary Movie — Ending Explained
The ending reveals that Doofy's intellectual disability was an elaborate disguise allowing him to commit murders while being dismissed as harmless, demonstrating that the "invisible" disabled person is the perfect cover for a serial killer in a community where everyone underestimates him. His escape with Gail suggests she either knew about his deception or willingly partners with him after learning the truth, positioning media ambition as morally equivalent to murder.
Bobby and Ray's copycat plan failing when Ray kills Bobby over a television show cancellation parodies slasher movie villain motivations by replacing serious trauma with absurdly trivial grievances. The reveal that they were only copying the real killer rather than being the actual murderer subverts audience expectations while maintaining the film's commitment to mocking horror genre conventions.
Brenda's death at the hands of angry moviegoers rather than the killer satirizes audience behavior and movie theater etiquette violations, suggesting that talking during films deserves death in the warped logic of horror comedies. The scene positions annoying theater patrons as justifiably murdered by other patrons, treating rudeness as capital offense.
Cindy being hit by a car immediately after solving the mystery provides anticlimactic punchline rather than triumphant resolution, refusing to give the final girl her traditional survival reward. The ending mocks horror movie conventions where protagonists survive against impossible odds by instead subjecting her to random accident after defeating the killer.
The film's multiple fake-outs—Bobby and Ray as fake killers, David Keegan as red herring, Doofy as unexpected actual killer—parody slasher films' tendency toward convoluted reveals and twist endings. The absurdity of the true killer being the intellectually disabled cop jokes about how these reveals often make no logical sense when scrutinized.
Scary Movie — FAQ
What movies does Scary Movie parody?
The film primarily parodies Scream (1996) and I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997), borrowing plot elements, character types, and scenes from both. It also references The Blair Witch Project, The Sixth Sense, The Matrix, and The Usual Suspects, among others. The opening scene directly parodies the famous Drew Barrymore sequence from Scream, while the hit-and-run backstory comes from I Know What You Did Last Summer.
Is Scary Movie actually scary or just comedy?
Scary Movie is purely a comedy horror parody with no genuine scares. The film intentionally undermines horror conventions for laughs rather than creating tension or fear. Every scene that would be frightening in a traditional slasher film is played for crude humor, slapstick violence, or absurdist comedy instead of suspense.
Why is the killer's identity different from who the characters think it is?
The film parodies slasher movie twist reveals where the killer's identity is unexpected. By making Doofy the killer instead of the obvious suspects (Bobby, Ray) or the vengeful spirit scenario (David Keegan), the movie mocks how horror films often reveal killers whose motivations make little sense or whose identity was impossible for audiences to predict because crucial information was withheld.
What is the significance of Bobby and Ray being a fake-out?
Bobby and Ray being revealed as copycat killers who were merely imitating the real murderer parodies Scream's twist ending where Billy and Stu are revealed as killers working together. The film takes this reveal and adds another layer by making them unsuccessful copycats rather than the actual threat, while also mocking the "gay panic" subtext of male horror villain partnerships by making Bobby explicitly gay while Ray denies it.
