Artist Tribute: Regina Hall in the Scary Movie Franchise

by Nick Taylor

We are ringing in the opening weekend for Paul Thomas Anderson’s new American epic One Battle After Another by celebrating a legend. While early reviews suggest an impressive performance likely to be overshadowed by the bigger challenges of her co-stars, I’m simply excited to see her kill it again on the big screen. Anything for this actress to keep building the goodwill necessary to one day swan across Oscar’s stage and receive the adulation she obviously deserves. I am, of course, talking about Regina Hall, one of the funniest people working in the pictures. With this year being the 25th anniversary of the very first Scary Movie (yes I know it was released in July, hush), we take this day to honor Hall’s superlative turns as Brenda Meeks across the first four films in the franchise . . . 

What’s scariest about your average Scary Movie is how little of Hall they actually feature. Yes, whole set pieces are handed to her on a silver platter, but the large number of ensemble players and standalone gags means we don’t spend a ton of time with Brenda. I suppose it’s admirable for the Wayans and David Zucker to give some material to all their main actors. On the other hand, the massive talent gap between Hall and many, many co-stars with equal or greater screen time can be read as further evidence of the buckshot approach to comedy that defines this series. Not one of the increasingly bland white boys paired with Faris are worth the screen time we could be spending with Hall’s ingenious nonsense.

In a different actress’s hands, Brenda Meeks could have existed at the level of mid Scary Movie mostly operates at. It’s not as though she’s given better dialogue or scenes to perform than her costars. Yet Hall transcends the easy caricature of the role to achieve something funnier, more specific, and more surprising. She’s not reducible to a hood college party girl the way even her best castmates can be boiled down to a single stereotype. During a recent interview with Vanity Fair, Hall talked about how Keenan Ivory Wayans kept expanding the role of Brenda, going so far as to merge her with another part because he was so impressed with her performance. So maybe my earlier complaint about her screen time in Scary Movie itself is unfounded, since Keenan Wayans clearly recognized her brilliance. The sequels tho? Hmm.

From her very first scene, Hall announces herself as an obnoxious force of nature. She hops next to Faris’s Cindy Campbell with physical robustness and a complete personality, happily gossiping about a mutual friend before giving the bestie she was just shit-talking a warm hello and kisses. The sheer contempt in her line reading of “With a backup dancer!”, layered with bafflement and she-should-know-better chastisement at their dumb friend’s dumb choices, is sheer perfection. Hall’s squeaky voice is a fabulous affectation that never limits the insanity of her line readings or doubles back into a crutch. Her physical vocabulary is just as flexible, whether she’s doing Nic Cage’s face-off gesture at a movie theatre patron or looking askance at another one of her boyfriend’s fruity flair-ups.

And speaking of, that theater scene might be the peak of this entire misbegotten franchise, riffing on the Scream 2 prologue by making Brenda as disruptive as possible in a screening of Shakespeare in Love. Hall discussed with Vanity Fair how much of this scene was ad-libbed, and how Keenan Ivory Wayans encouraged her to trust her own comedic instincts throughout filming, and god does this pay off magnificently. Every single thing she does in that theater is nightmarishly disruptive, and the joke of how totally she repudiates everyone shushing her is improved by the fact that Brenda’s genuinely losing her mind at how good Shake-a-spear in Love is. Absolutely no self-awareness, but she’s got good taste. A comedic tour de force, ending on an almost poignant, despairing note through how perfectly she mirrors Jada’s final scream of terror after being Caeser’d.

It must be said how funny Brenda’s appearance in Scary Movie 2 is, with zero explanation, after she died so spectacularly. But who minds, when the loopy non-logic gives Hall another chance to shine so magnificently? Can death itself stop Brenda Meeks, let alone the fabric of reality? A skeleton sure can’t. “Cindy, this is bones! Would you run from Calista Flockheart?!” is a regular line in my household, and it goes hard when playing DND, casually strolling through a museum, or making fun of a friend’s concerning obsession with twinks. The times I’ve said this to friends who didn’t know what I was referencing were so shocking, I considered showing them Scary Movie 2, which is not good! Also: How many of you could hear Hall’s exact inflections in your minds when you read that quote? How many lines can you recall with the precise clarity one might reserve for the feeling of a summer dewdrop moistening your brow in childhood? I could write this scene up, or we can just watch it now, which we were obviously going to do anyways.

Scary Movie 3 frontloads Hall, cruelly tricking the unsuspecting viewer into believing she’ll stick around as a major player. While I deeply resent kicking her out of the film so early, Zucker really gives Brenda some great material before she goes. Her full-body raunchiness in her elementary school classroom in that crusty pre-Annalise bob is funnier than it should be, and the way she tosses off “Now who the fuck did that?” is just as funny as her more extravagant gags. Everything Hall does in her last sequence, squaring off against Tabitha, is a series peak. Starting off the scene in Brenda’s actual fear at a ghost crawling out of her TV, chomping away at popcorn like she’s watching a scary movie (HA!) before swerving to practical indignation about this bitch messing up her floors, is so good. Hall’s physical comedy during her fight with Tabitha is inspired - the windup alone is a great bit of cartoonish exaggeration, something the Scary Movies play with often in the setup of their gags but is rarely embodied in the physicality of their actors in this way. She’s like Bugs Bunny in a boxing ring.

What I won’t forgive Zucker for is giving Hall almost no front-and-center scenes in Scary Movie 4. As good as she is with courtroom flirtations and all the horny combat in the Saw trap, it’s a bummer how Brenda is largely reduced to throwing out one-liners. There’s at least novelty to watching Hall nail a sicko Thelma Ritter routine. More than that, it’s simply amazing how Hall finds a pervy, feisty character to play in Scary Movie 3 and 4, a plausibly “grown up” version of the messy, keen-eyed college party girl she originated.

Hall’s ability to deliver a fully realized performance in these conditions, not just once but four times, is miraculous. Nailing this broad comedy is not as easy as it looks! She’s unquestionably Oscar worthy for the first two films, and would have vastly improved the Supporting Actress lineups of each year she been nominated for any of these films. Even so, as one audience member among millions who love everything about what Hall does here, I could never have predicted the incredible range Hall has served since then. Especially in the past decade, going from a giant, shameless performance to such detailed negotiations of personal and professional crises is not what I was expecting from her. To see Hall enrich differently ambitious projects like Girls Trip and Support the Girls and Honk for Jesus, Save Your Soul, to watch her regularly present at awards shows when she isn't hosting the Oscars or the BET Awards, feels like the industry making good on her evident talent in the best way possible. Who can predict how this maturing will manifest when Hall returns to Scary Movie 6, but if I know one thing, it’s that she’s gonna kill it doing the dumbest shit imaginable. That’s what top-tier actressing is all about.

One Battle After Another is currently playing in theaters nationwide. All five Scary Movies are available to rent, buy, or stream on most major online platforms.