A small group of college students are invited by Professor Tim Curry to spend a weekend at a deserted country retreat. Unknown to the students, this retreat is commonly known as 'Hell House’, rumoured to be haunted by the ghost of its former owner Hugh Kane. The Professor leads them to believe that the weekend is all about a group study of insomnia. The truth is that the Professor hopes that these youngsters, thanks to their near death experiences during the serial killing that took place the year before, will act as the catalysts to awaken Kane’s spirit. Indeed, not long after their arrival, one student, Cindy (Anna Faris), starts to feel that she has some sort of psychic connection with this house…

Does this premise sound familiar? Of course it does. Whereas ‘Scary Movie’ was essentially a pastiche of ‘slasher’ films like ‘Scream’ and ‘I know what you did last summer’, the sequel lampoons the haunted house concept – primarily poking fun at ‘The Haunting’ (the house in that film was haunted by a Hugh Crain!) and to a lesser extent ‘The Game’ and ‘The Legend of Hell House’.

After this trite opening, things have to improve and thankfully they do, once the story moves to the college campus and then shortly to ‘Hell House’. Be warned that good taste is not on the agenda! The film is constantly playing for laughs and it seems that no taboo is left untouched - jokes about paraplegics, the physically deformed, smoking weed, buggery, oral sex and masturbation are all included. As the action stakes are upped in the film’s last half-hour other movies – ‘Hollow Man’ and ‘Charlie’s Angels’ – start to come in for the parody treatment.

What is more, although attempts at jokes come thick and fast here, they really are something of a mixed big of hits and misses. When the gags hit, they pretty much hit the bull’s-eye. When they miss, they aren’t even anywhere near the proverbial barn door. There are one or two sequences that would simply be lost on British audiences because they are quite clearly parodying American adverts or programmes that are unfamiliar to us.

The faces among the older cast members will probably be more familiar to you. The most well known will be Tim Curry as the professor of course – does he ever play a totally straight non-eccentric character?! You may also recognize Chris Elliot from ‘There’s something about Mary’, as the caretaker with the horribly deformed hand!
James Woods (what on earth is he doing in stuff like this?!) also has a cameo role in the prologue as the priest who comes to perform the exorcism.

What spoils the fun a little is that, just as he did in the first film, director Keenen Ivory Wayans is intent on throwing in one or two thinly disguised quasi-political statements behind the jokes. ‘Black people always get the short end of the stick’ is the message that keeps filtering through the comedy. They may have a point, they may not – I’m certainly going to get into a discussion about it here - but the film can simply do without such social comment.

To summarize then, there are several more films doing the rounds at the moment that are more worthy of your time than ‘Scary Movie 2’. However, if you have seen them all and you have a spare few hours on your hands, then you will probably find it (to repeat a phrase I used above) 'passably entertaining'!