Rotten Tomatoes
13%
At a haunted mansion called Hell House, Mrs. Voorhees is hosting a formal dinner party when her daughter Megan walks in, possessed by the spirit of Hugh Kane, the house's cruel former owner. Megan insults the guests and wets the floor. Two priests, Father McFeely and Father Harris, try an exorcism that turns into a vomiting and insult match. When Megan insults McFeely's mother, he pulls a gun and shoots her.
A year later Cindy Campbell, Brenda Meeks, Ray Wilkins and Shorty Meeks are in college, trying to move on from the killings in the first film. The awkward Alex Monday latches onto Cindy and Brenda. Shorty is still stoned. Ray, still confused about his sexuality, hangs out with two new friends, Tommy and Buddy. Buddy likes Cindy. She turns him down after her last relationship but agrees to be friends.
Professor Oldman and his assistant Dwight Hartman, who uses a wheelchair, want to study the paranormal activity at Hell House. They sign up Cindy and her friends as test subjects and tell them it is a sleep study. At the house Cindy meets a foul-mouthed parrot named Polly and Hanson, the creepy caretaker, whose withered hand ruins everyone's dinner. The pretty Theo joins the group.
That night voices lead Cindy to a hidden room, where she and Buddy find the diary of Kane's wife and notice Cindy looks like her portrait. The house goes after everyone. Kane's ghost sleeps with Alex and leaves the moment she mentions commitment. Cindy has a knock-down fistfight with the house cat, Mr. Kittles. Cindy is possessed by Kane's wife and tries to seduce Oldman, then snaps out of it with no memory. A toy clown attacks Ray and Ray ends up assaulting it. A giant marijuana plant rolls Shorty into a joint and smokes him, which he enjoys, before it gets distracted and lets him go.
In the morning Oldman tells Dwight nobody leaves, no matter what, and gives him the only keys. Theo offers Dwight a sexual favor for the keys, knocks him out and takes them. That night the ghost of Kane's mistress lures Oldman into the tunnels under the house, shows her true face and kills him.
Dwight hands out weapons that can hurt ghosts, and the ghosts hunt the group through the mansion. Alex goes looking for Kane and he drops a chandelier on her. Buddy and Cindy get locked in the walk-in freezer, and Cindy builds a working tractor out of random objects to break out. Kane possesses Hanson, who kidnaps a drunk Shorty. Cindy, Brenda and Theo fight Hanson in a Charlie's Angels style brawl and lose, until Cindy drives Kane out of him. The group regroups with Dwight, Cindy offers herself as bait, and they lure Kane into a machine that destroys him.
Two months later Cindy and Buddy are a couple. On a walk, Buddy vanishes and Hanson shows up to take Cindy away. As she screams in the road, Hanson laughs, and then he is run over by Shorty, who is not watching the road because the ghost of Kane's mistress is in his lap.
Story notes
- Parodies: The Exorcist, 1973. The whole opening. Megan Voorhees is possessed, Father McFeely and Father Harris try to help, it turns into a swearing contest, and it ends with a gunshot rather than an exorcism. Variety called this prologue astoundingly new and the funniest thing in the film.
- Parodies: The Haunting, 1999. The main plot. The living hallways, the moving beds, the whispering walls, and Tim Curry’s professor standing in for Liam Neeson.
- Parodies: The Legend of Hell House, 1973. Investigators in a haunted mansion, the cake scene, and the business with the ghost.
- Parodies: The Amityville Horror, 1979. Father McFeely on the toilet calling the flies demonic while he prays.
- Parodies: Poltergeist, 1982. The clown doll going after Ray, the tree going after Shorty, and the drag across the ceiling.
- Parodies: Hollow Man, 2000. The freezer, the thermal goggles and the plasma cannons.
- Parodies: What Lies Beneath, 2000. Ray in the red dress, and the face that changes at the end.
- Parodies: The Changeling, House on Haunted Hill, Stigmata, Hannibal, Charlie’s Angels, Dude Where’s My Car, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, It, Little Shop of Horrors, Titanic, Mission Impossible 2 and Dirty Harry all get a turn.
- Mostly the expected sequel wording, but Japan kept its pun running: 最'新'絶叫計画 swaps saishū ("final") for saishin ("newest"), so the joke title becomes "Newest Scream Plan". Croatia went with Mrak mrak film, doubling their own word.
- Spanish markets moved the joke along: Colombia used Otra película de miedo, "Another Scary Movie".
- America July 4, 2001. Portugal and France in July, the UK September 7, Brazil September 14, Mexico September 28, Italy October 12, Australia October 18, Spain October 31, Germany November 8. Japan did not get it until October 12, 2002fifteen months late, the longest wait any Scary Movie has had in a major market.
- Britain rated it 18, as did Ireland and Hungary. Mexico restricted it to adults. Sweden again said 11. Germany rated it 16; parts one and two were the only entries below the 2026 film to carry a 16 there rather than a 12.
- France was the biggest foreign market on 10,823,566 dollars, then Germany 9,509,696 and the UK 6,264,624. Foreign business was 49.5 percent of the total.
Release facts
- Rated: R (strong sexual and gross humor, graphic language and some drug content)
- Domestic: $71,277,420 (The Numbers); Box Office Mojo lists $71,308,997
- Worldwide: $141,189,101 (The Numbers); Box Office Mojo lists $141,220,678
- Studio: Gold/Miller Productions, Wayans Bros. Entertainment, Brad Grey Pictures
Scary Movie 2 opened on the Fourth of July holiday in 3,220 theaters and came in second behind Cats & Dogs with $20,503,356, less than half the first film's opening. It finished with $71.3 million in North America and $69.9 million overseas, for $141.2 million worldwide on a budget that had grown from $19 million to $45 million. It made the least money of the first four films. Only Scary Movie 5 in 2013 did worse.
Critics were far harder on it than on the first film. Rotten Tomatoes has it at 13 percent from 110 reviews and calls it a sloppy, rushed-out product. Metacritic gives it 29 from 25 critics. CinemaScore audiences still gave it a B, up from the first film's B minus.
Robert Koehler reviewed it for Variety at the Avco Cinema in Los Angeles on July 2, 2001. He said the eight minute Exorcist opening was the funniest thing in the film and nothing after it matched it, and that unlike Scream 2, this sequel did not top the original.
Awards: it won a Bronze Bogey Award in Germany in 2001 for box office, and the Teen Choice Award for Choice Movie Your Parents Didn't Want You to See. It was nominated for Teen Choice Choice Movie of the Summer, the 2002 ALMA Award for makeup (Rebecca DeHerrera), and a 2002 Canadian Comedy Award for Best Female Performance (Kathleen Robertson).
The collapse from the first film to this one is the story: 52 percent down to 13, and a Metascore of 48 down to 29. The Washington Post called it a pocket of infection on the skin of the American body cultural. New York magazine said it was not scary, funny scary, or even just plain funny. The San Francisco Chronicle called it ugly, profane and terror inducing. Variety liked the cast, singled out David Cross and James Woods, and said the effects were underwhelming and the lighting far too bright for a horror comedy. Audiences were much kinder than the critics, and the CinemaScore only slipped from a B minus to a B.
Scores
Metacritic
29
CinemaScore
B
Deleted Scenes & Trivia
- The DVD has 22 deleted and alternate scenes running about 44 minutes. Quite a few are Tori Spelling scenes. DVD Talk's reviewer thought the funniest were two with David Cross's Dwight: one of him racing into the college parking lot and one of him handing out directions to the haunted house in class.
- Three alternate endings are included. In one, the priest and the police show up after the fight and tell Cindy she is the only survivor. Her friends fade away as they cross over, and Cindy is hit by a car inside the house.
- Other cut scenes include TV reporters explaining why the group cannot leave the house (rain, a cab strike, Cindy's car exploding), Cindy nearly drowning in a haunted bathtub, and Brenda's fake psychic visions.
Trivia
- Collider and Vice both report Marlon Brando's fee as $2 million.
- Anna Faris, Regina Hall, Shawn Wayans and Marlon Wayans all came back even though their characters had been killed in the first film.
- Veronica Cartwright, from Alien, Invasion of the Body Snatchers and The Birds, plays Mrs. Voorhees, a last name borrowed from Friday the 13th. She plays the Ellen Burstyn part from The Exorcist and leads the dinner guests in Shake Ya Ass.
- Beetlejuice from The Howard Stern Show plays Shorty's brain.
- The directions Cindy reads on the way to the house send her down Hades Divide past Elm Street to Kane Manor.
- The foul-mouthed parrot borrows Anne Robinson's goodbye line from The Weakest Link.
- Alex Monday's name is close to Alex Munday, Lucy Liu's character in the 2000 Charlie's Angels.
- Tori Spelling and Kathleen Robertson had both been on Beverly Hills, 90210. Spelling was worried two 90210 girls would not both get cast.
- Veronica Cartwright plays Mrs Voorhees. She was in Alien, Invasion of the Body Snatchers and The Birds, so putting her in a haunted house comedy is its own joke.
- Casting Tim Curry lets the film point at both It and The Rocky Horror Picture Show without saying a word.
- Giving a character the surname Voorhees drops Friday the 13th into an Exorcist parody.
- The cat fight, where Cindy has a straight brawl with a house cat, is one of the two sequences critics who hated the film still named as working.
- Audiences liked this one better than the critics did, and stranger still, they liked it better than the first film. The audience score went up from 43 to 52 percent while the critics went from 52 down to 13.
- There has never been a 4K release of this one.
- Brando's single day of shooting makes this one of the last projects he ever appeared on set for; he died in 2004.
- James Woods was paid $1 million for four days' work as his replacement.
- Bill Clinton was seriously discussed as a replacement priest before the idea was dropped.
- Charlton Heston turned the role down.
- The production team screened more than 130 horror films in preparation.
- The film's tagline answered the first film's "No sequel" promise with "We lied."
- Veronica Cartwright, a genuine horror veteran (Alien, Invasion of the Body Snatchers), plays Mrs. Voorhees, a name lifted from Friday the 13th.
- Natasha Lyonne's character is named Megan Voorhees, completing the joke.
- Tim Curry's casting as Professor Oldman nods to his own Rocky Horror Picture Show history, which the film also parodies.
- The budget more than doubled from the first film, to $45 million, while the worldwide gross halved.
- It opened at number two in the US, behind the July 4 competition, with $20.5 million, less than half the original's opening.
- In a 2024 interview Marlon Wayans said the family's departure from the franchise after this film stemmed from creative conflicts with Bob and Harvey Weinstein.
Connections
- Sequel to Scary Movie (2000). Cindy, Brenda, Ray and Shorty return, and Cindy says she is just getting over a bad relationship with Bobby.
- Main parody targets: The Haunting (1999) and The Legend of Hell House (1973), with an opening lifted from The Exorcist (1973).
- Also spoofed: The Amityville Horror (the flies), Poltergeist (the clown), House on Haunted Hill (1959 and 1999), The Changeling, The Entity, What Lies Beneath, Hollow Man (the freezer, goggles and plasma guns), Stigmata, Bloodbath at the House of Death, Hannibal, Charlie's Angels (the fight with Hanson), Dude, Where's My Car?, Save the Last Dance, Little Shop of Horrors, Mission: Impossible 2, Raging Bull, The Rocky Horror Picture Show and a Nike basketball commercial.
- Followed by Scary Movie 3 (2003), the first film without the Wayans family. The Wayans returned for Scary Movie (2026).
Sources
- Scary Movie 2 (Wikipedia)
- Scary Movie 2 (2001) cast and crew, TMDB
- Scary Movie 2, AFI Catalog
- Scary Movie 2, The Numbers
- Scary Movie 2 production notes, Cinema.com
- Scary Movie 2 review, Variety (2001)
- Scary Movie 2 DVD review, DVD Talk (J. Doyle Wallis, 2001)
- Scary Movie 2 Blu-ray, Blu-ray.com
- After Marlon Brando Dropped Out of Scary Movie 2, Collider
- One of the Stars of The Godfather Almost Played the Priest in Scary Movie 2, Vice
- Tori Spelling Says Her Dad Approved Of Her Going Topless In Scary Movie 2, uInterview
- Scary Movie 2 film locations, Global Film Locations
- As Scary Movie Turns 20, Marlon Wayans Opens Up About the Evil Weinstein Regime, IndieWire
- Scary Movie 2, Scary Movie Wiki (Fandom)
- Scary Movie 2, Box Office Mojo
- Marlon Wayans recounts how the Weinsteins took the Scary Movie franchise, JoBlo
