Scary Movie 3 is a 2003 Horror Comedy film directed by David Zucker. The third movie in the Scary Movie series, it's also the first of three sequels to lack the input of The Wayans Family, but they eventually returned for the sixth film. The starring cast includes Charlie Sheen, Anna Faris, Kevin Hart, Leslie Nielsen, Simon Rex, George Carlin, and Denise Richards.
The movie parodies a number of horror and sci-fi works, primarily The Ring (2002), Signs, and The Matrix Reloaded. The story begins when Cindy, wanting to find some exciting news worth reporting, learns about a video tape that kills whoever watches it after seven days. She aims to discover the truth behind the mystery, but will she be ready for it?
Followed by Scary Movie 4.
The movie provides examples of:
- Absurdly Ineffective Barricade: The protagonists are shown boarding over a door to keep aliens out (in a parody of Signs). George says nobody could get through it...cue Cindy opening the door with no problem to join them. It turns out they'd just nailed some planks to it without fastening them to the wall.
- Achilles' Heel: Parodied. The aliens are fighting the group (though just because strangling is how they say hello), when Mahalik decapitates one with a shovel and says:Mahalik: I found it! Without their heads, they're powerless!
- Aliens Speaking English: The aliens apparently can talk to humans, though they only do so once one of their group has been killed in an altercation.
- Aliens Steal Cable: The aliens accidentally saw the tape from The Ring while doing this. They were trying to get Pootie Tang.
- And Starring: "Featuring Queen Latifah / Special Appearance by Eddie Griffin / With Denise Richards / With Regina Hall / and Charlie Sheen."
- Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: The Architect describing the Samara expy: "We loved our daughter, but she was evil. Made the horses crazy, killed our puppies, hid the remote. Really sick shit."
- Battle Rapping: It features the battle between real rapper Fat Joe and the film's character, George, a hilarious parody of the rap battles in 8 Mile.George: I wear khaki pants / My middle name's Lance / My grandma's from France / So maybe I'm whack / 'Cause my skin ain't black / But you can't talk smack / 'Cause whitey just struck back!
- Boob-Based Gag: Cindy, when flashing her chest to the office, suddenly has comically huge breasts. Amusingly, in the prior movies she had been mocked for supposedly having a small and unimpressive chest. Given it follows her being ordered to do a fluff news report on breast implants, it may also be a gag that she has paid for a breast enhancement between films.
- Breaking Bad News Gently: Parodied when George informs Sue about the death of Brenda, who was her teacher. It seems like he'll be considerate in telling her this news, since she's only a child. Instead he just loudly screams the distressing news in her face and tells her he ran over her dog too. ("EVERYONE you love around you is DYING!")
- Breathless Non Sequitur: The news reporter Ross Giggins delivers a report on an alien invasion, telling people that the White House is advising everyone to board up their homes and then continues without a pause or change in tone "And now a news exclusive. The killer videotape you've been hearing about. We're the only station that has it, and we're showing it all night. Very exciting. Let's roll it again." (plays videotape)
- Brick Joke: The Architect mistakenly returned the VHS with Tabitha in it thinking it was Pootie Tang. It's later revealed that the aliens unwillingly endangered themselves upon watching the tape, again, thinking it was Pootie Tang.
- Cargo Ship: In-universe. The Architect notes that since he's confined to a room in the middle of nowhere he hasn't been with a woman in ages. He's had to make do with his chair, which he calls "Linda".
- Cavalry Failure: When it looks like the Logan farm is about to become ground zero for the alien invasion, a convoy of tricked-out SUVs comes rolling in blaring hip-hop and carrying CJ and several rather heavily-armed gangsters as last-second backup because the hood would always have George's back. Then two of them get into a verbal tussle about one stepping on the other's foot which soon escalates into a shouting match and they all kill each other.
- Celebrity Casualty: Simon Cowell is shot to death by rappers when he criticizes their singing.
- Censorship by Spelling: One of President Harris's advisers tells him that he should go on TV and tell everyone that there's no such thing as UFOs. The president's reaction seems to indicate he thinks he's a victim of this trope. "Don't spell in front of me, dammit."
- Comically Missing the Point:
- A black janitor hijacks the teleprompter to get revenge on the anchor, typing that he's having sex with the anchor's wife and bragging about how she loves it. The anchor reads it all with a straight face without noticing that the content is insulting him.
- Also, during the rap battle scene, when told to lose the KKK-looking hoodie he's wearing, George says, "I know, we're in the hood now!"
- Credits Gag: About halfway through the closing credits, there's a message reading "We are about halfway through this thing!"
- Cross-Cultural Handshake: The aliens greet each other by getting the person they're greeting in a choke hold. They say goodbye with a Groin Attack.
- Destination Defenestration: George gets thrown out of a window twice, once for being Mistaken for Racist and again for accidentally desecrating Brenda's corpse.
- Darker and Edgier: In spite of being PG-13 and still being a comedy film, this instalment is noticeable darker and bleaker than the first two films, having a noticeable washed out color tone (given the films it spoofs) and the threat of a slasher from the first film or a haunted house in second film being replaced with literal alien invasion.
- Disaster Dominoes: Brenda's funeral devolves into chaos when Cindy discusses the event, saying "it's a wake," and George thinks she said the body is awake. The crowd gets into a brawl while they try to revive Brenda, ending in George applying electricity and blowing her corpse into pieces much to the horror of her family.
- Dodgy Toupee: Used as a throwaway gag. The psychic Creepy Child whom Cindy is caring for goes around Brenda's funeral service giving people cynical and mocking advice ("smoke all you want, you're gonna be hit by a car next week anyway"). He tells the guy with an obvious toupee that he's not fooling anyone.
- Dramatic Gun Cock: Parodied. One of the characters dramatically pumps... a shovel. A shell falls out somehow.
- DVD Bonus Content: Alternate endings not included in the theater release (including one in Scary Movie 3 parodying The Incredible Hulk).
- Electrically Frizzy Hair: At Brenda's wake, George uses the electrical cords from a lamp as a makeshift defibrillator to try to shock Brenda's body back to life. Mahalik, who is still atop of Brenda's corpse trying to revive her, couldn't get out of the way in time and he ends up being harmlessly electrocuted with his hair comically standing on end.
- Fanservice Faux Fight: The film opens with a pillow fight between Katie (Jenny McCarthy) and Becky (Pamela Anderson), both made out as eye candy.
- Forgot to Mind Their Head:
- Tom bumps his head twice on an overhead lamp while sitting up in bed in the morning.
- Cindy comes home to find George passed out at a table. She asks him what happened; he says that he doesn't know. He and Cody were playing a fun game when he looked down and...George: (seeing five dice reading 6 on the table) Oooh, Yahtzee! (stands up and bangs his head on a shelf, passes out)
- The "Fun" in "Funeral": George, due to his ignorance of a wake's meaning, attempts to revive Brenda, but fails so disastriously that he causes her body to explode into pieces, much to the horror of her family, out of the sheer inane methods he attempts to revive her. It manages to be humorous because of how ridiculous a blunder the mess escalates to.
- Funny Background Event: As George is breaking the news to Sue that her teacher, Brenda, died in the most brutal way possible, Tom is standing in the background wincing, making stop motions with his arms and cringing, then walks out of the room.
- Gasshole: This series is no stranger to this style of humor, but the 3rd installment gave us Aunt Shaneequa, Queen Latifah's flatulent take on the Oracle from The Matrix. When Cindy arrives at her home, she takes a seat in one of the red leather chairs, making a mild fart noise that she blames on the chair. Shaneequa then shamelessly rips a comically long, lengthy fart, punctuated by a smile as she casually takes a drag from her cigarette and quips, "Yes... the chair." The look on Cindy's face as she's at a loss for words has to be seen to be believed.Aunt Shaneequa: "Let's find a men's room... I'm feelin' it."
- Go into the Light: Played for laughs, when Charlie Sheen's character urges his dying wife to go into the light as he doesn't want to answer to her dying wish for his celibacy.
- Hilariously Abusive Childhood: Cody accidentally getting injured by the adults in his life is a running gag, to the point that, when George declares his intent to save him in the climax, Cody clings to the villain for safety.
- I Can't Hear You: Cindy gets a call from the girl from the scary videotape in The Ring after watching the video, but at first can't understand that she's being told "seven days" (meaning that the girl is going to come and kill her in seven days) due to bad connection.Tabitha: (indistinct) Seven days.
Cindy: What? Willie Mays?
Tabitha: (still indistinct) Seven days.
Cindy: Who's gay? Hello? - If It Bleeds, It Leads: Purposely averted by the news station that Cindy Campbell works for. Despite her urging them to cover the story of the killer videotape in which viewers are brutally murdered by a scary woman seven days after watching it, the station is only interested in covering fluff stories and stuff like breast implants. Then, once they finally become convinced of the tape's existence, they choose to play it.
- Insult Backfire:Aide: Mr. President, are you out of your mind?!
President: Like a fox! - Last Request: Parodied when Tom, in a flashback, finds his wife breathing out her last after she's pinned to a tree as a result of a tragic car accident. Her last request is that he never sleep with another woman again, and he quickly pretends that her last words are too unintelligible to make out and tells her to go into the light.
- Missing White Woman Syndrome: Brenda calls this out after mistaking Tabitha's well on the TV as a news report about a white girl who fell down a well.Brenda: Another little white girl fell down a well! Fifty black people got their ass beat by the police today, but the whole world gotta stop for one little whitey down a hole!
- Mistaken for Flatulence: Played for Laughs. Cindy sits on a vinyl chair. What follows is a squeaking sound that she quickly claims was the chair. Aunt Shaneequa sits on another chair, resulting in a very loud fartlike noise (implied to not be a result of the chair), but she uses the same excuse.
- Mistaken for Racist: George puts on a KKK-esque pointed white hoodie and does what looks like a Nazi salute in front of a predominantly black audience at a rap battle, not even being aware of what he's doing wrong due to seeing what his actions/presentation looks like to the crowd. He gets promptly thrown out of a second-story window.
- Mood Whiplash: The scene where George hears of Brenda's death and telling Sue. It's played straight for the first twenty seconds, up until the way he breaks the news to her, and it immediately derails.
- Nobody Ever Complained Before: The aliens appear to attack the protagonists, who then kill one of them in retaliation, but the aliens inform them that strangling each other is their standard way of saying hello. A kick to the groin is how they say goodbye.
- Not Evil, Just Misunderstood: The aliens aren't looking to launch an invasion of Earth. They're just there because they accidentally watched the The Ring videotape like the other characters, so they need to do something about Tabitha before she comes to kill them.
- Oh, No... Not Again!: Cindy keeps forgetting Cody, leading to a moment of regret and anxiety at the end of the movie when she notices him missing again. She doesn't hit him backing up the car like she did before — instead, another car plows into him from the side.
- Only Sane Man: The President's aide is more logical than his Commander in Chief and has better social sense and no comedic idiocy like the rest of the movie's cast.
- Oracular Urchin: Cody, a boy with psychic visions who was adopted by his aunt.
- Otherworldly Communication Failure: The main plot centers on a perceived invasion from a hostile alien race. However, it turns out that the aliens are actually friendly and are on Earth to find Tabitha (parodying Samara from The Ring) as their entire population accidentally watched the cursed tape and are now slated to die in seven days. When asked why they were attacking the humans, the aliens explained that to say "hello" in their language, you grab someone in a chokehold. To say "goodbye", you kick the other person in the nuts.
- Passed in Their Sleep: Parodied where C.J. and Mahalik discuss the trope and end up arguing if one can actually "wake up dead".
- Peaceful in Death: Parodied: "My sweet sweet Brenda—-She looks so peaceful..." (cut to Brenda with a horrified expression and hands like claws)
- Perfectly Cromulent Word: The guy in the lighthouse tells Cindy that she is "inexorably seeking a sedulant probability." When she questions this, he continues, holding a dictionary with "What about contingent affirmation? That's got to mean something."
- Precision F-Strike: Brenda delivers one to her elementary school class after someone throws a bunch of crayons at George and Sue as they leave the room.Brenda: Now who the fuck did that?!
- Pretty Fly for a White Guy: George, a white man aspiring to be a rapper. The black characters aren't impressed, especially not after he tanks his rap-battle success with accidentally racist gestures.
- Refuge in Audacity: "Tom, I'll need a ride home." This is coming from the same person who hit Tom's wife with a car.
- The funeral scene, which George tries to revive Brenda in front of her family, but instead causes her to explode. It would be normally monstrous if done by anyone else, but it manages to hilarious instead due to how ignorant he is of the phrase "wake" and how it's done out of sheer impossible stupidity of good intentions.
- Saved by the Platform Below: The lady who parodies Anna Morgan from The Ring jumps off a cliff only to crash into a tree branch. "Oh, shit!" she says before rolling off it.
- Script Swap: Cindy, desperate to get out the story of the cursed videotape, and a mistreated janitor both hijack Giggins' teleprompter to change the script he's delivering live as a news anchor.
- Shout-Out:
- Among other things, to the Zucker brothers' film Airplane! which also starred Leslie Nielsen in an Actor Allusion:President Harris: I just wanted to wish you both good luck, we're all counting on you.
- Air Force One. When Harris wondered what "President Ford" would have done, it seems like he was talking about Gerald Ford. However, the camera pans along to show a still portrait of Harrison Ford in his presidential suit instead.
- Among other things, to the Zucker brothers' film Airplane! which also starred Leslie Nielsen in an Actor Allusion:
- Suddenly Shouting: When George breaks the news to Sue about her teacher Brenda's death.George: (quietly) Sue?
Sue: Yes?
George: You know your teacher, Miss Brenda?
Sue: Yeah.
George: SHE'S DEAD! (Sue screams.) GONE FOREVER! DIED A HORRIBLE, PAINFUL DEATH! GONE, GONE, GONE, JUST LIKE YOUR DOG!
Sue: My dog's dead?
George: I JUST RAN HIM OVER WITH THE CAR WHEN I DROVE IN! EVERYONE YOU LOVE AROUND YOU IS DYING! (Reactive Continuous Scream) - Take That!: MJ, being a parody of Michael Jackson and referencing contemporary scandals and his extreme physical appearance in critical fashion.
- Ever since it was created, the cursed video has been circulating and killing innocent people. Just like Pootie Tang.
- Television Portal: Tabitha, the parody of Samara, naturally crawls out of the TV in one scene. In another, Cindy shows Shaneequa the Oracle the cursed video tape, and a fly lands on the screen over the nose of the woman brushing her hair. When Shaneequa swats the fly, the woman recoils in pain and reaches out to fight her, resulting in a tussle where Shaneequa is pulling the videotape-woman out of the screen and ripping out chunks of her hair.
- They Look Like Us Now: Parodied. President Harris worries that the aliens may have started impersonating human beings, then mistakes people with disabilities for the aliens during a memorial ceremony and punches them, throwing the entire event into chaos.
- Troll: Tabitha, the girl from the The Ring video, takes the form of a beautiful girl, claiming that seeing Cindy's love for Cody has freed her and she'll never have to kill again. "Really?" asks Cindy, and she transforms back into her horrifying form, telling her she was just screwing with her.
- Unsettling Gender-Reveal: Downplayed. The psychic kid meets a tall woman and her male date at the funeral and tells him "You're getting lucky tonight" and her "he doesn't know you're a guy." Considering both of them smile at the respective news, it doesn't seem like it will be a problem.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: The Architect reveals that after his wife drowned Tabitha, she imprinted her evil onto a VHS tape. He ended up mistakenly returning that tape to a Blockbuster thinking it was Pootie Tang, unleashing the curse.
- Vomit Indiscretion Shot: The movie shows two men projectile vomiting at a barbecue and in the alternate ending, Cindy is fighting the many Tabithas Matrix Reloaded style, she grabs a pole, jumps up, spins around on it, gets sick and vomits all over the Tabithas sending them flying. Gross.
- Worst News Judgment Ever: The news station that Cindy Campbell works for refuses to air her story about a killer videotape which anyone who watches it dies seven days later. This, however, doesn't necessarily make it this trope, as her story does seem rather out there. What does makes it this trope is that they're instead more concerned with airing fluff news stories and stories about things like breast implants. Then, when they finally do become convinced that the tape exists, they get a copy of it and play it.Ross Giggins: We're the only station that has it, and we are showing it all night. (videotape begins playing)
- You Just Had to Say It: Logan asks how the aliens say goodbye in their language. And wished he didn't.Logan: (doubling over in pain, holding his groin) I had to ask.