Lionsgate has unveiled the first trailer for Boo! A Madea Halloween, and while you at first may think this is simply the same-old franchise play from the Madea series, you’re wrong—it’s worse. The idea for Boo! A Madea Halloween actually came from a joke that Chris Rock made in his 2014 film Top Five. Someone at Lionsgate saw the movie, considered the joke, and thought, “You know what, that’s not such a bad idea.” So lest you think Hollywood is above mining jokes made at their expense for movie ideas, here comes Boo! A Madea Halloween to prove you wrong.
But you know what? This trailer’s kind of funny. It feels like Tyler Perry is in on the joke somehow, that the title and premise of this film is so outlandish and silly that it demands to be acknowledged. This is only a teaser trailer, but color me surprised that this—at first glance, at least—looks not entirely terrible. We know from Gone Girl that Perry’s a terrific actor, and while he’s clearly doing just fine developing his own films, I do hope another talented filmmaker sees how David Fincher used him in that film and decides to give him another meaty role. Until then, I guess we’re left with Perry’s Madea fending off ghosts, ghouls and zombies with a shotgun and a foul mouth.
Check out the teaser trailer below. Perry wrote and directed Boo! A Madea Halloween, which also stars Bella Thorne, Jimmy Tatro, Diamond White, Kian Lawley, and Yousef Erakat and opens in theaters on October 21st.
Here’s the official logline for Boo! A Madea Halloween:
In TYLER PERRY’S BOO! A MADEA HALLOWEEN, Madea winds up in the middle of mayhem when she spends a hilarious, haunted Halloween fending off killers, paranormal poltergeists, ghosts, ghouls and zombies while keeping a watchful eye on a group of misbehaving teens.
