Tabitha is a fictional character in the Scary Movie franchise. She was played by Marilyn Eng (zombie form) and Naomi Lawson-Baird (human form).
Bio
Tabitha was once a normal but very cruel little girl. She was adopted by a man and his wife, who could not give birth to their own child. While she was young, Tabitha killed the dogs, made the horses crazy and hid the remote to the television. Her foster mother eventually killed her by pushing her into an old well near their farm which would later be under the floorboards of Tom Logan and George Logan's farmhouse.
Unfortunately, Before she was killed, Tabitha managed to somehow imprint her soul upon a VHS tape. When the tape was played, it would play an incoherent rush of bizarre and unsettling images at weird and close angles. After it ended, her angry spirit would communicate with the watcher over the telephone system to tell them they would die in seven days. On the day in question, her corpse-like spirit would emerge from the TV that had played the tape and kill the person who had watched it. It's not sure how her foster father escaped this fate or if he was aware of it, but after keeping it hidden for a while, he accidentally placed the cursed tape in a VHS cover for the movie Pooty Tang, inadvertently resulting it to pass on to a string of strangers and carry on its curse. At some point, Tabitha murdered Becka Kotler and Katie Embry.
Tabitha in demonic form
Scary Movie 3
Sometime later, schoolteacher Brenda Meeks also watched the tape and was murdered seven days later by her despite not taking it seriously. Tabitha was beaten up by Brenda in the process, but she eventually defeated her. Her best friend, Cindy Campbell, soon found a reference to the tape after reading Brenda's diary and also ended up watching the tape out of curiosity while investigating Brenda's death, but she accidentally inadvertently left it out to be watched by her nephew, Cody. When Tabitha called to warn Cody, Cindy took the call and argued with Tabitha over the phone before reverting to character, taking a message and passing it on to Cody, technically fulfilling the curse. To save Cody, Cindy consulted with Shaneequa and Orpheus to try and find a way to save them both. She also attempted to warn the public not to watch the tape, but her news network refused to take the tape seriously and compounded the incident by televising it on a loop, triggering a potential apocalypse.
Somewhere along the way, an extra-terrestrial race somehow downloaded the tape while it was on VHS (or maybe while it was being televised), thinking it was a copy of Pooty Tang, and launched espionage missions to track down and stop Tabitha from killing them. Their activity at the Logan Farm brought Cindy to Tom Logan and George Logan's farmhouse where Cindy eventually fought Tabitha taking a physical form. Cindy tried to appeal to the humanity in Tabitha's corrupted soul, but Tabitha just mocked her for the attempt. At that moment, President Baxter Harris opened the door to the Logan cellar abruptly, knocking Tabitha back into the old well in which she had previously drowned. While she was trapped, George Logan re-sealed the well with the heavy stone cover to finally imprison her against doing any more harm.
With Tabitha imprisoned, her curse on Cindy, Cody and everyone else who saw her video was negated.
Trivia
- In the original ending, Cindy battles Tabitha in "The Matrix," but this version ended up so crowded with movie homages that it was dropped and the ending completely re-written.
- It is never unrevealed how she receives her victim's phone numbers. However, being a ghost, it is unlikely she's limited by technology.
- When she emerges from the TVs of her potential victims, the screen acts like a portal as if she is possessing her video image and using it to take form in the physical realm. However, it is unknown as to why she just can't appear normal instead of as a decomposed corpse or zombie.
- It's not clear if Shaneequa and Orpheus were visited by Tabitha. However, they didn't watch the entire tape, and they also used sophisticated settings to scroll the footage for additional details. It's also possible Tabitha was defeated before their seven days.
- It's not clear if George defeated Tabitha in her own body or as one of duplicates. Given her proximity to the well, she possibly returned to her deceased remains in the well, but if that was the case, she should have been further composed and barely recognizable.