Scary Movie 5 is the painfully unenjoyable product of what most would simply call laziness. It’s what happens when the writers of a film are more focused on making a movie culturally relevant than making it funny or coherent.  There are no jokes in Scary Movie 5 — only dated references to people and movies that are hardly even talked about anymore.

The movie opens with a scene featuring Charlie Sheen and Lindsay Lohan in a bed making fun of themselves; all they’re really doing is proving to be the self-indulgent morons we already knew they were.  It goes on for about five minutes  until we see that it’s all leading up to a joke about the Paranormal Activity series, and by “joke” I mean blatantly reference a scene from the film.

This scene proves to serve no purpose because just seconds later we find ourselves turning our attention to the real stars of the movie, Ashley Tisdale and Simon Rex.

The two are adopting Rex’s brother’s three daughters, which is when we discover that the rest of the movie is going to be a parody of the Jessica Chastain sleeper-hit, Mama, which came out two months ago.  Yes, the movie was made two months ago. The film also makes several references to movies that came out three years ago, like Black Swan, 127 Hours, Inception and somehow a movie that came out two weeks before Scary Movie 5, Evil Dead.

There’s no need to waste any time describing the film’s plot because it doesn’t really have one.  The only reason there is any semblance of a plot is so that the writers can have an excuse to shoe-horn as many dated references as possible in 85 minutes.  It’s the epitome of lazy writing—nothing about this movie feels genuine.  It feels as if someone just took an issue of E! Magazine, ripped out a few pages, stapled them together and then put a cover page on it saying, “Scary Movie 5.”

We can only assume Ashley Tisdale is there only to replace Anna Farris, who starred in every other Scary Movie. Farris was at least able to bring some swagger to an otherwise abysmal film with her enthusiastic facial expressions. Tisdale, on the other hand, does absolutely nothing here. She doesn’t even seem as if she wants to be there.

To be fair, it does feel as if every other cast member was aware of the fact that they were in the Citizen Kane of bad movies. Knowing that would probably give someone the incentive to give a performance lacking any sort of charisma or feeling, and that’s clearly the case here.

Nobody in this movie seems “into it.” Everyone here just looks as if they’re hoping to finish production as soon as possible and collect their paycheck. It in turn just kind of makes the movie experience feel so much worse.

This movie does have an audience; there’s a reason why the franchise is still ongoing. However, it’s probably fair to make the assumption that this audience isn’t the brightest. I was fortunate enough to sit at a screening of the film in which an audience member asked what the word “sobriety” meant, after having laughed at a dated joke about Lindsay Lohan’s arrest.

There isn’t much else to say really. Simply giving the film a review is giving it more attention than it deserves. Everyone involved in Scary Movie 5 should be ashamed of themselves for making such a creatively deficient piece of entertainment and contributing to the dumbing-down of our nation’s youth. Please don’t see it.