The fourth, and thankfully final, instalment of the Scary Movie series is the best yet. Unfortunately, given the dubious quality of the first three films, this is hardly a ringing endorsement for a franchise.

Fittingly enough, Scary Movie 4 goes out with a bang (the almost total destruction of the world), poking fun at films such as The Grudge, King Kong, Saw, Saw II, The Village and War Of The Worlds.

Celebrity cameos litter the rambling screenplay, which cobbles together a rag-tag selection of pop culture references and spoofs with no attempt whatsoever to create a cohesive whole.

As usual, it isn't a case of gags failing to hit their target; the laughs aren't there in the first place.

Very occasionally, when you least expect it, writers David Zucker, Craig Mazin and Jim Abrahams hit the mark: the President of the United States (Leslie Nielsen) learning of the alien invasion whilst reading a book about a duck with schoolchildren (a la George Bush on September 11), a cute sight gag with a hand-glider.

More often than not, though, the trio of writers roasts the old chestnuts a character's bowel movements, excessive bodily fluids, innuendo ("That's OK, I've taken balls to the face before") until we can stand no more.

At the centre of this madness is Cindy Campbell (Anna Faris), the one-time plucky TV news reporter who has survived the murderous attentions of not one, not two, but three masked serial killers.

Now, she has turned her back on the media to seek employment as a healthcare professional.

Soon enough, she is hired to care for an old woman (Cloris Leachman) whose house is haunted by a ghost.

Scary Movie certainly looks slick and the special effects are actually quite impressive, especially the War Of The Worlds sequences, but there's no tangible humour underpinning most of this carnage. The Million Dollar Baby skit falls embarrassingly flat, as do the crass love scenes modelled on Brokeback Mountain between a pair of big city bruvvas.

Praise be that it's only 83 minutes.

Based on true events chronicled in Brent Monahan's book, An American Haunting is a scary movie of sorts, in that the events chronicled here an early 19th century family driven to the brink of insanity by a vengeful spirit must have been terrifying for those involved.

Alas, for cinema audiences, Courtney Solomon's film fails to chill right from the opening sequence, in which a young girl runs into her house, supposedly chased by some horrifying invisible force (represented by a Steadicam cameraman thundering close behind).

The relevance of this contemporary sequence to the events of 1818 is only revealed in the film's fleeting final moments, by which time we're hankering for a speedy exorcism.

Indeed, when the truth about the spirit's nature and origin is finally revealed, it's a massive anti-climax.

Donald Sutherland and Sissy Spacek trade anguished wide-eyed stares as things go bump in the night, while Rachel Hurd-Wood, who made her mark as Wendy in the live action version of Peter Pan, faces the humiliation of being battered and bruised by her spectral attacker.

Solomon fails to generate tension and alternates between various points of view, including hallucinogenic sequences from the perspective of the spirit, swooping around the old farmhouse like an inebriated pigeon.