Marlon Wayans isn’t a bad actor, and he’s proven to be a hugely successful one, too, with a number of his starring vehicles doing big business at the box office. However, his output is certainly polarizing, with many audiences and fans lamenting the string of repetitively uninspired comedies that he churns out on a regular basis, while others can’t get enough of them.
The 48 year-old has been a constant presence across both film and television dating back almost 30 years, so you can’t fault his longevity, either, but it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that his filmography is bursting with classics. As mentioned previously, he’s seen some big financial returns, with the first two entries in the Scary Movie franchise alone earning a combined total of $419 million, while subsequent efforts like White Chicks and Little Man each brought in over $100 million.
A Haunted House was another smash hit that raked in $60 million on a paltry budget of just $2.5 million, but the found footage horror spoof was resoundingly panned, and holds a Rotten Tomatoes score of just 9%. However, cash almost guarantees a sequel in the modern era regardless of quality, so we ended up with a second installment fifteen months later, which earned less than half as much.
The follow-up is now streaming on Netflix, and while it might well appeal to subscribers, it aims to straddle the line between parody, spoof, comedy and love letter to the subgenre itself, and fails at all of them. The scattergun approach means that a couple of jokes will land eventually, but for the most part, A Haunted House 2 is a lazy and slapdash exercise in lowest common denominator studio fare.