Big Break

Big Break

A group of comedians and a serial killer in a bloody comedy horror

After years apart, a group of comedian friends receives an invitation to the home of an old buddy from their comedy crew. He’s the only one among them to have achieved real Hollywood success. He’s done what every struggling comedian dreams of: written a screenplay that made him a fortune. The comedians arrive at his secluded house in the woods, each with the same plan in mind: to score a role in his next movie. Old grudges, jealousy, and resentments soon rise to the surface, while dark secrets start spilling out over dinner. As if that weren’t enough, a merciless serial killer is roaming the surrounding woods. Can people who make a living making others laugh survive a beast in human form?

“Big Break” is a sharp comedy horror with thriller elements and a bloody satire of show business. It mixes absurd buddy comedy, slasher mayhem, and nail-biting tension, while still managing to be genuinely hilarious. It’s a film about friendship put to the test and ambition pushed into a mild state of feverish obsession. Above all, though, “Big Break” is a riotously funny horror movie, surprisingly brutal and macabre in all the right ways. It has the nervous energy of comedic improvisation, along with the kind of humor that emerges when the characters are desperate to hold on to the last scraps of their dignity. It feels like a stand-up night interrupted by a series of bloody murders.

The film comes from New York comedy group Simple Town, who, after years of creating sketches and performing live, bring their own slightly twisted world to the big screen. Ian Faria directs, while the screenplay was written by Samuel Lanier, who also stars alongside Caroline Yost, Felipe Di Poi Tamargo, and Will Niedmann as heightened versions of themselves. It’s a feature debut built on the chemistry of people who clearly know each other’s worst sides well enough to turn them into comedy. Ivy Wolk also appears in one of the roles. The comedian has been making increasingly frequent appearances on the big screen in recent years. She has already been seen in the Oscar-winning “Anora” and, more recently, in Ryan Murphy’s latest series, “The Shards.”