{"id":4185,"date":"2026-07-14T17:10:30","date_gmt":"2026-07-14T17:10:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/relocationobserver.com\/?p=4185"},"modified":"2026-07-14T17:10:30","modified_gmt":"2026-07-14T17:10:30","slug":"big-break-in-this-meta-horror-comedy-a-real-life-sketch-group-pursues-fame-and-dodges-a-killer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/relocationobserver.com\/?p=4185","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Big Break\u2019: In This Meta Horror Comedy, a Real-Life Sketch Group Pursues Fame and Dodges a Killer"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<div>\n<!-- do not apply CSS styles to this element! --><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>\n\tWhen the New York-based sketch group Simple Town considered making a movie, horror seemed like the most practical way in.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/relocationobserver.com\/?p=4183\">Fronti\u00e8res Juicy Vampire Comedy \u2018Gro(ceries,\u2019 Starring and Co-Written by \u2018Sex Education\u2019s\u2019 Chinenye Ezeudu-Sterling, Adds French Co-Production Partners (EXCLUSIVE)<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\n\t\u201cWe obviously wanted it to be a funny movie because we\u2019re a comedy group,\u201d Sam Lanier, the film\u2019s writer and a cast member, said. \u201cBut we felt that the horror genre would be a super fun way to make a movie, because it\u2019s a way to get an interesting plot into a comedy. We sometimes feel like it\u2019s hard to make comedies <em>interesting<\/em>, like you want to know what happens next. So we thought, \u2018OK, what\u2019s a scary, real, dark thing about our lives that we could write about?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\n\tPerhaps unsurprisingly for a troupe of 30-somethings, nothing seemed scarier than career malaise. The group, comprised of Lanier, Will Niedmann, director Ian Faria, Caroline Yost and Felipe Di Poi, has had plenty of experience getting to know the NYC scene through live performances and viral sketches, but they channeled anxieties about success and being competitive with friends into the bones of their feature, \u201cBig Break,\u201d which is set to debut on July 19 at Fantasia Festival.<\/p>\n<p>\n\tIn the movie, which stars all the Simple Town members \u2014 outside of Faria \u2014 playing fictionalized versions of themselves, Lanier hits it big on a movie project and leaves the rest of his sketch group behind. But years later he invites his friends to reconnect at this bougie vacation home, and the underemployed trio hopes to ask Lanier for work on his next project. Unfortunately,  a serial killer may be lurking in the woods around the house.<\/p>\n<p>\n\tYost, who also edited the film, says that the main dynamic between the friends is something she\u2019s seen take shape in the comedy community.<\/p>\n<p>\n\t\u201cWe\u2019ve been doing this long enough that we see what happens when people\u2019s lives change after so long,\u201d she says. \u201cPeople are unknown artists and struggling to get by, and then, occasionally, someone skyrockets to success. I think that has a big impact on their relationships. People really want to be known or feel some kind of security, to work against the uncertainty of how your life is going to be and how difficult it is to establish\u00a0yourself. Often it comes from this innocent place of trying so hard to get something going for yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\n\tWhen it came to getting their vision on the big screen, Di Poi said that beyond the laughs and scares in the script, the group had to work to find a cohesive tone to thread the film together.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/relocationobserver.com\/?p=4181\">Carey Mulligan Joins Billie Eilish in \u2018The Bell Jar\u2019 (EXCLUSIVE)<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\n\t\u201cI remember having a lot of conversations when we were rehearsing where I was like, \u2018Are we playing this big and silly? This dialogue <em>could<\/em> go big and silly,\u2019\u201d he says. \u201cWe could play it really real. I think we all have different approaches. Some of us lean toward the more real, some of us lean toward the sillier at different moments. It just came together both in rehearsing and playing it together, and then doing it in front of the camera and feeling the emotions, feeling each other\u2019s emotions and trying to match each other. Then in the edit to say, \u2018That take was a little too big\u2019 or \u2018Let\u2019s get this moment dumber now.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\n\tGiven the comedic sensibilities of Simple Town, Faria said he was frequently considering the look and feel of the film in order to make sure there were plenty of visual moments to keep audiences on the edge of their seats.<\/p>\n<p>\n\t\u201cIt was fun trying to make something that\u2019s very tense all the time,\u201d he says. \u201cI was trying to frame open doorways in the back, so you\u2019re always wondering, \u2018Is someone going to pop in?\u2019, or light the room a little dark or high contrast. There\u2019s a lot of parts in the movie where there\u2019s tension or scares, but it\u2019s a comedy movie using a horror vocabulary where it\u2019s almost making fun of the fact something would be scary in that moment.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\n\tSimple Town is following in the footsteps of sketch comedians-turned-filmmakers like Jordan Peele, Zach Cregger and Curry Barker. Niedmann says there\u2019s a clear through-line linking their humor with scary movie sensibilities.<\/p>\n<p>\n\t\u201cThere\u2019s something very similar about the two genres, where if you take an anxiety or a fear you have in comedy, you can heighten that thing to be really funny,\u201d he says. \u201cYou can do the same thing in horror where it can become very scary. You can make a monster out of something. We were very excited to take this thing that did feel real for us, and use this language that we\u2019ve worked out of making comedy and the beats of that. The experience of being in an audience watching the two is similar. It\u2019s really fun to be at a big, scary movie in the theater and feel the energy from people scared and shouting.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/relocationobserver.com\/?p=4179\">Alex Gibney\u2019s Elon Musk Doc Headlines Bleecker Street\u2019s Biggest Awards Slate Ever, Alongside New Films Starring Helen Mirren and Carrie Coon (EXCLUSIVE)<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\n\tWatch an exclusive first clip from \u201cBig Break\u201d below.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8216;Big Break,&#8217; the horror movie from sketch comedy group Simple Town, is set to debut at Fantasia Festival.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4184,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[3401,889,3402],"class_list":["post-4185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-film","tag-big-break","tag-fantasia-film-festival","tag-simple-town"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - 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