Cindy Campbell

Scary Movie (2000)

Cindy is a high school student attending B. A. Corpse High School with her boyfriend Bobby Prinze. Their friends include Brenda Meeks, Buffy Gilmore, Ray Wilkins and Greg Phillipe. Despite being in a committed relationship with Bobby, the two of them still have not consummated their relationship. Following Drew Decker's death, it is revealed that one year prior, the six of them had accidentally ran over a man while drinking. While the man was unharmed, they did not notice and after accidentally knocking him unconscious, dumped his body at a pier. Later the same day, she notices Ghostface outside her classroom and a note on her desk telling her that "they know what she did last Halloween". After being attacked by Ghostface, she assumes that Bobby is the killer and gets him arrested. After the real killer calls her, she decides to invite her friends to keep each other safe. Thanks to Shorty, the small get-together turns into a party. After having sex with Bobby, it is revealed that he is gay and in a relationship with Ray. Despite killing Shorty, they reveal to her that they are copycats of the real killer who appears and kills both of them. After knocking him out, Cindy is taken to the police station where she realizes Doofy, Buffy's brother, is the killer. Despite running after him, Doofy manages to escape, leaving Cindy screaming in the middle of the street, only to get ran over by a car.

Scary Movie 2

One year after the events of the previous film, Cindy is attending college with Brenda, Shorty and Ray, despite all three of them having died in the previous film and the latter having tried to kill her.

Cindy and her friends (including her new love interest Buddy) then are invited to an experiment on insomnia. Little did they know, it was an invite to a haunted house. Cindy then joins the house alongside her friends and meets the people that works for the house.

After a long time, Cindy and her friends gets some paranormal encounters with the ghost that haunts the house. Eventually, the ghost is defeated and they leave the haunted house. Cindy and Buddy tries to make a healthy new relationship. But after Buddy realizes that the creepy butler Hanson that worked for the haunted house is alive, he runs away and is never seen again. Cindy gets desperate, only to have Hanson get ran over by a car.

Scary Movie 3

Now a journalist, Cindy has custody of her paranormally gifted nephew, Cody. She again meets Brenda, now a teacher. Unnerved, Brenda asks Cindy to stay with her for the night, when she says she watched a cursed tape. Brenda is murdered by a supernatural girl named Tabitha after failing to turn off the TV. Cindy goes after the answer to the curse of the tape, discovering that aliens are also involved, all while trying to protect Cody and her new friends, Tom Logan, his daughter, and brother George, who becomes Cindy's love interest. After breaking the curse, she marries George.

Scary Movie 4

Cindy has become broke and lonely because her husband George had died and her nephew Cody has enrolled in military academy.

Over the following day, Cindy bonds with Tom Ryan, confiding to him about George's death in a fateful boxing match. The two realize their newfound love, but are interrupted by a gigantic triPod which disables electricity and starts vaporizing the town residents.

Cindy converses in mock Japanese with the haunted house's ghost, Toshio, learning that the answer of the invasion is his father's heart. While Tom leaves the city with his children, Cindy reunites with her friend, Brenda Meeks, miraculously alive after her death (having been pieced back together by Mahalik). Following Toshio's directions, the two head to the countryside and end up in a mysterious, isolated community. They are captured and put to trial headed by Henry Hale. The result allows them to live but never leave the village.

Tom and his children drive and find themselves in the middle of a war between the U.S. military and the aliens. Excited with the conflict, Robbie runs away, while Tom and Rachel are taken by the triPod. Back at the village, Henry is killed by the village loon, Ezekiel, revealing to Cindy that he fathered Toshio, who was killed during Cindy's boxing match. Cindy and Brenda are soon taken by the triPod and sent to the bathroom seen in the prologue, and they get stuck into the Venus flytrap. Cindy manages to get through Billy's challenge, but is threatened with the safety of Tom and his children, who are put to traps. Looking at a toilet with the "heart" nearby, Cindy realizes that Billy, through Henry's wife, is the true father of Toshio. Seeing how far Tom would go to save his children, Billy apologizes for the invasion and releases them. Robbie and Rachel are successfully returned to their mother who is revealed to have married a much older man. Brenda also becomes romantically involved with Billy's brother, Zoltar. Meanwhile, Tom appears in The Oprah Winfrey Show and wildly professes his love for Cindy by jumping around, throwing Cindy, and crushing Oprah's wrists and hitting her with a chair.

Scary Movie (2026)

Cindy will return in Scary Movie (2026), which picks up twenty-years following Scary Movie 4. She now has two daughters, Sara and Tuesday and attends a High School Reunion 26 years following her graduation and reunites with some old friends such as Brenda, Shorty, Ray, Greg, Doofy, and former lover Bobby, while they are targeted by a new killer impersonating the original Ghostface killer as well as mimicking other horror icons. She is a parody of the incarnation of Laurie Strode from the 2018-2022 Blumhouse Halloween trilogy.

Parody and inspiration

In Scary Movie (2000), Cindy is a parody of Sidney Prescott from Scream and Julie James from I Know What You Did Last Summer. Her first name is a play on Sidney, while her last name is taken from Neve Campbell, who portrayed Sidney in the Scream franchise.^[1]

Casting and portrayal

In an interview with People, it was revealed that Anna Faris beat out about hundreds of actresses who auditioned for the role of Cindy. Keenen Ivory Wayans, director of the first two films, said about Faris that "there was a great freshness about her, because [she] had nothing to lose. She didn't think in a million years she was going to get the part".^[2]

Faris revealed that Scary Movie was her first Hollywood audition and that she highly enjoyed working on the franchise as it allowed her to be funny, feeling that female characters are not often allowed to be funny in films.^[3] Additionally, she stated that one of the things she liked about the franchise is that "[they] can spoof whatever [they want,] take what's popular at the moment and slide it into a very complicated plot structure".^[4]

Critical response

Bruce G. Hallenbeck, in his book Comedy-Horror Films: A Chronological History, 1914–2008, described Faris as "the real discovery of Scary Movie, the one performer who tries valiantly to hold everything together".^[1]