A Haunted House

In a recent interview with HitFix, Marlon Wayans used the similarly timed releases of his found-footage horror comedy A Haunted House and the fourth Scary Movie sequel as an excuse to rant against the franchise he helped launch. He discussed the differences between what he described as a passion-fueled labor of love like A Haunted House and a cynical exercise in pandering and exploitation like Scary Movie 5. At his most delusional, Wayans huffed that there’s an art to comedy, and his new film embodies it. So it’s tempting to imagine what Wayans considers the best example of its meticulous comic craftsmanship. Would it be the two-minute-long sequence where a nearly naked Wayans simulates an enthusiastic orgy by dry-humping a series of stuffed animals? Or the scene where he’s anally violated in his sleep by a horny, bisexual, pot-smoking ghost? Or maybe Wayans feels the many flatulence jokes in the film better illustrate his comic philosophy? It’s unclear, but what’s certain is that Wayans has a unique, self-serving idea of what art entails.