The film stars Anna Faris, Regina Hall, Craig Bierko, Bill Pullman, Anthony Anderson, Carmen Electra, Chris Elliott, Kevin Hart, Cloris Leachman, Michael Madsen, Dr. Phil McGraw, Leslie Nielsen, Shaquille O'Neal and Molly Shannon.

The film marks the final franchise appearances of the main stars, Faris and Hall (who portray Cindy and Brenda, respectively), and concludes the original story arc.

They both realize their newfound love, but are interrupted by a gigantic tripod which disables the city's electricity and starts vaporizing the town residents.

While Tom leaves the city with his children, Cindy reunites with her friend, Brenda Meeks, inexplicably alive after her death in the previous film.

Meanwhile, there is an emergency United Nations meeting, headed by the eccentric U.S. President Baxter Harris, who is reluctant to stop reading "My Pet Duck".

Looking at a toilet with the "heart" nearby, Cindy realizes that the Puppet, through Henry's wife, is the true biological father of the Japanese boy.

An epilogue set one month afterwards, narrated by James Earl Jones who is subsequently hit by a bus, reveals Brenda's giving birth to her child with Zoltar, Mahalik and CJ resuming their relationship, and President Harris being content with his duck.

[7] Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a grade "C+" on a scale of A+ to F.[8] Stephen Hunter of The Washington Post stated that while "Scary Movie 4 never takes you close to death by laughter [...] it's funny enough to turn the hands on your watch much more quickly than you can believe.

"[9] Nathan Lee of The New York Times' described the film as being "organized on the principle of parody, not plot, [...] it's an exercise in lowbrow postmodernism, a movie-movie contraption more nuts than Charlie Kaufman's gnarliest fever dream.