When Scary Movie began spiraling downwards with the release of all of its subsequent sequels, it seemed obvious that the franchise had long since lost interest in making successful parodies. The Scary Movie’s were cash cows for the Wayans brothers, who have largely fallen out of cultural relevance. Yet, because of these films they have spawned something more terrible than ever thought possible. Two of the six writers of Scary Movie formed a writing/directing team that would be responsible for some of the worst movies of the decade: Aaron Seltzer and Jason Friedberg.

Yes, these are the men responsible for the atrocities Epic Movie, Meet the Spartans and Disaster Movie. After watching even a single trailer for these films, let alone the films themselves, it seems abundantly obvious that the pair have little to no concept of what a parody is or what the word even means. The world is filled with brilliant and shining examples of cinematic parodies like Airplane! and Spaceballs. These films are proof that the successful spoof can, in fact, be made, but judging by the body of work of Seltzer and Friedberg, they haven’t the slightest clue.

In a quick breakdown of what it is, exactly, that causes these films to fail, take a look at Epic Movie. The title suggests a film making fun of epics in the way Scary Movie made fun of movies like Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer. An epic, when applied to film, is exemplified by the likes of Ben-Hur, Cleopatra and The Lord of the Rings. However, Epic Movie makes no real mention of films such as these. Instead, they focus on popular films that had been released the year before like Superman Returns, Harry Potter and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest. It has nothing new to add and relies on celebrity caricatures under the guise of “comedy.”

Meet the Spartans goes even father in that everything about it, including its very premise, relies solely on the popularity of other recent films and fads to the extent that it goes to great lengths to mention a Youtube video that was old news before the film was even released. There’s a reason why internet memes do not make good fodder for film parody: their popularity doesn’t last long enough for anyone to care that you’re making fun of it. The pair continually fails to realize that their insistence on using fads at the center of their films is bad for business because it’s time sensitive material that’s extremely unlikely to matter to anyone dumb enough to watch one of these movies twice. Does anyone still care that Britney Spears shaved her head a few years ago? No. Hell, does anyone even really care about Britney Spears? No. And that alone flushes a few pages of script down the toilet.

As the team continues to crank out these shoddy pieces of cinematic garbage year after year someone needs to stand up and scream, “STOP.” If Friedberg and Seltzer can’t be bothered to come up with a single original idea, and their body of work strongly suggests that they can’t, then it’s time for them to move on and consider all of the lonely movie theatres that could really use someone to pick the gum up off their floors. Leave the parodies to the genius of men like Mel Brooks; your time is up.