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Bob Hoose

Movie Review

There are frightening things afoot. And it’s not just Charlie Sheen’s and Lindsay Lohan’s matching house arrest ankle bracelets. No, there’s something spooky going on. And when those two fallen celebs spend the night together, winding up dead by morning’s light, it sets a whole series of scary events in motion:

Internet chatter falls oddly silent.

The tabloids have only two-headed aliens and Kardashian babies to report on.

And Charlie’s three kids suddenly disappear.

Oh well. After a few years, pot-stalking rappers are bound to find the kids in a cabin in the woods somewhere. Charlie’s (unheard-of) brother Dan will likely show up to adopt the now feral little ones. And he and his rocker/ballerina girlfriend, Jody, will raise the children as their own.

To that I can only say, Mama!

Dan and Jody will, of course, now have to set up movement-capturing cameras to track Mama’s malevolent mania. They’ll bring in a psychic. Maybe even employ a Leonardo DiCaprio lookalike to help them poke around in their dreams. Jody might even audition for the lead in Swan Lake.

Maybe if someone were to be hit in the head and/or crotch a few dozen times it might help! Or what if various objects were shoved up various backsides? Or if excrement was tossed around? Isn’t there anything that can be done to help those creepy little ceiling-crawling kids … or at least generate a snicker or two?

No?

No.

Positive Elements

Well … uh … Jody does say she loves the kids (even though the statement is used as a setup for a dog/child leg-humping gag). And … um … that’s about it.

Spiritual Elements

This is an obvious spoof of a ghost story. But the ghosty tale still sets a certain spiritual tone. For one thing, it eventually reveals that a woman opened a “book of evil” and after repeating several Latin-like words (actually the alien phrase “Klaatu barada nikto” from the movie The Day the Earth Stood Still) she’s possessed by an evil spirit.

The film goes on to play with that possession idea … and bash Christians at the same time. Jody and her friend Kendra meet a group of Bible-studying believers who offer them words of God’s salvation. The women move into another room where they repeat the “evil” words over and over, causing the Christians to become possessed and physically mutilate themselves. (Skim down to “Violent Content” for more details. Or not.)

The family’s Hispanic maid, Maria, is also held up as a source of ridicule. In the midst of the ghostly visits, Maria is constantly praying and waving incense, holy water and crosses around. She ultimately rips the head off of a chicken and paints a large cross on the wall with the animal’s spurting blood.

Sexual Content

The very first scene sets the sexual stage with Charlie Sheen and Lindsay Lohan preparing to hop into bed together. The drawn-out sequence features jokes about Charlie’s bedroom full of recording equipment and his wall full of sex tapes. From there it goes on to lots of cartoonish sexual acrobatics—featuring Lindsay in skimpy lingerie.

Video recordings show Jody getting “sexually” involved with everything from a houseplant to a microwave oven. She wears a variety of cleavage-baring, tight-fitting outfits. An “escort” Santa shows off his naked backside. We see two naked women in the shower covered only by “well-placed” blobs of soap suds.

After taking drugs, Jody and Kendra strip down to bra and panties and proceed to have sex. Kendra seductively runs her fingers in and around Jody’s mouth, then the camera focuses on Jody’s face while Kendra pleasures her. Kendra does a poll dance, licking the pole and shaking her backside suggestively. When looking online for info about the “book of evil,” Jody keeps ending up on a porn site featuring scantily clad women. The book Fifty Shades of Grey comes up in a dream sequence involving whips, sex toys and bondage-oriented restraints. One of the young girls finds a vibrator and a box of sex toys.

Dan drops lots of penis jokes. They’re joined by visual and/or verbal gags about bestiality, rape, pedophilia, child and animal molestation, homosexuality, incest, anal sex, oral sex, girls with giant breasts, guys with giant breasts, masturbation, auto-fellatio, copulating dogs, STDs and prostitution.

Violent Content

The group of possessed Christians cut themselves and one another with blades and power tools. One woman slices her tongue in two, another hacks off her own arm, and a guy saws off his leg, etc. (We see screaming faces and spurting, splashing gore.) An armless, legless man reports that his genitals are in the corner.

Dan is the victim of many, many thumps and spills. He’s kicked in the crotch, falls off tables, smashes through a window, is severely shocked and gets banged on the head with everything from a power box to a rack full of frying pans. Others get poked in the backside and bitten on the leg. When the wandering rappers first come upon the cabin housing the feral girls, they pull out their guns and start shooting at everything that moves.

Dan and Maria get into a brawl in the front yard, punching and kicking each other, and lashing out with yard ornaments. Dan is eventually run over by a riding mower. A group of female reality TV stars also go at it. (Girls are thrown around the room.) Large apes storm through the streets, pounding humans as they go. A car explodes.

A ballerina is crushed beneath a falling brick wall. (She comedically survives.) A newborn is kicked across a stage. A baby’s hair is set on fire and head is thumped into a door jam. Jody and Dan get into a fight with one of their young charges, exchanging punches to the face with her.

Somebody falls into a pool and is eaten by a shark. Jody and Kendra walk into a dark basement decorated with hanging animal carcasses.

Crude or Profane Language

One full-on f-word (and about 10 more that are partially bleeped during the closing outtakes). Twenty or so s-words. There are a half-dozen uses each of “h‑‑‑,” “a‑‑,” “d‑‑n” and “b‑‑ch.” We hear several n-words. God’s name is misused six or eight times; Jesus’ once or twice.

Drug and Alcohol Content

An older ballerina smokes a cigarette and drinks a martini while dancing. Jody and Kendra take Ecstasy and then go on a partying romp of dancing and drinking. Other partygoers drink as well. Two rappers raid an illegal pot farm and steal a bundle of weed. (When they spot the pair of animal-like girls in the woods, they think it’s the drugs they’ve been smoking.)

And here’s a sentence I never thought I’d have to write: A group of swimming pool vacuums have a party—mimicking human sexual and drug-taking activities. The next morning the pool is scattered with debris, including discarded beer bottles.

Other Negative Elements

If it has anything at all to do with an orifice of any kind, it’s turned into a crude joke here—generally in the context of objects and substances stuck in them. Animals toss excrement. Bulimia is belittled. Urination and gassy bowel movements, of course, come up in (repeated) gross ways, as does a pregnant woman’s water breaking and her baby shooting across the room like a missile.

Conclusion

In a sentence, Ashley Tisdale, Lindsay Lohan, Charlie Sheen and Snoop Dogg (or is it Snoop Lion now?) poke flimsy, filthy fun at movies like Mama, Paranormal Activity 4, Evil Dead, Black SwanRise of the Planet of the Apes and Inception, along with the popular sleaze-read Fifty Shades of Grey.

It’s a paper-thin storyline, to be sure. In fact, Scary Movie V (or, if you’ve been looking at all the posters, Scary MoVie) is so tediously offensive and pointless that the high-water mark of humor comes in the form of Snoop and Mac Miller ambling through the woods looking for a pot farm while profanely bantering about how so many scary movies take place in a cabin in the woods, just like … The Cabin in the Woods.

Not holding your sides yet?

In an interview with craveonline.com, producer David Zucker was asked about the movie using a Roman numeral V in its title rather than the number 5. It turns out that the studio was hesitant to remind viewers that there have already been so many other carbon copy entries in the series. But Zucker opined, “I don’t buy the whole fact that it necessarily has to be stale. It’s always fresh to me.”

Now that’s scary. I’m going to hope the loss of his sense of smell isn’t catching.

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Bob Hoose

After spending more than two decades touring, directing, writing and producing for Christian theater and radio (most recently for Adventures in Odyssey, which he still contributes to), Bob joined the Plugged In staff to help us focus more heavily on video games. He is also one of our primary movie reviewers.