When the New York-based sketch group Simple Town considered making a movie, horror seemed like the most practical way in.
“We obviously wanted it to be a funny movie because we’re a comedy group,” Sam Lanier, the film’s writer and a cast member, said. “But we felt that the horror genre would be a super fun way to make a movie, because it’s a way to get an interesting plot into a comedy. We sometimes feel like it’s hard to make comedies interesting, like you want to know what happens next. So we thought, ‘OK, what’s a scary, real, dark thing about our lives that we could write about?’”
Perhaps 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, “Big Break,” which is set to debut on July 19 at Fantasia Festival.
In the movie, which stars all the Simple Town members — outside of Faria — 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.
