On July 7, 2000, Scary Movie ushered in a new breed of spoof movies. While it was a huge crowd pleaser, garnering $278 million worldwide, it still wasn’t up to par with the likes of the ZAZ crew of brothers David and Jerry Zucker and Jim Abrahams. Since the first Scary Movie, there has been a steady decline in quality. Not only did most critics hate Scary Movies 2, 3, and 4, we also had to suffer through the succession of movies brought to us by Aaron Seltzer and Jason Friedberg (Date Movie, Epic Movie, Meet the Spartans, Disaster Movie, Vampires Suck). Yes, the days of Airplane!, Top Secret!, The Naked Guns and Hot Shots! are truly over.
Now it seems that these films are being rightfully banished to the direct-to-video dump where they belong. After having already suffered through Supernatural Activity a mere two months ago, now an even worse offender has been wrought in the form of 30 Nights of Paranormal Activity with the Devil Inside the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo from the same man who “treated” us to The 41-Year-Old-Virgin Who Knocked Up Sarah Marshall and Felt Superbad About It. Trust me when I say that the films found within his titles are no more imaginative than that. Writer/director Craig Moss is running with the Seltzer/Friedberg template that string a bunch of movie/TV/commercial references together cobbled alongside fart, piss, and dick jokes, thinking he’s got himself the funniest movie you’ll ever see. I think not.
30 Nights begins with a Storage Wars episode spoof now called “Storage Battles,” wherein two sisters have just bought a storage unit for $75. Inside they find Adele (Melissa Fosse-Dunne) playing a piano and a VHS tape labeled “Found Footage.” The two sisters decide to watch the tape which consists of a documentary about Dana (Kathryn Fiore) who is off to visit her father Herb (French Stewart), who’s been locked up in the world’s best psychiatric hospital located in Italy where the nurses include Mario and Luigi. Herb has been locked away after being possessed and killing the entire cast of The Artist back in 1989. (See what kind of logic Moss thinks is funny?)
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Article comments
1 - The Other Chad
I almost thought about watching this movie, because I have the ridiculous urge to check out all these parody movies, no matter how bottom of the barrel. After reading your review, I still might! Some of the stuff you described actually sounded kind of funny. But I believe you that it's terrible. And I will probably hate myself for wasting the time watching it....
2 - Cinenerd
Ha, unfortunately that's why I keep reviewing them. Even worse, I kind of actually wanna see Scary Movie 5 :-/