Fantasia International Film Festival
Big Break Review: Sketch Group’s Woodland Getaway Turns Bloody in Hilarious Horror Comedy
Real-life comedy collective Simple Town play themselves in serial killer thriller
by Alex Kaan 20 July 2026
Simple Town
Independent horror cinema is a tried-and-true avenue for catapulting fresh voices to success, from James Wan and Leigh Whannell with Saw to Curry Barker’s stratospheric rise this year thanks to Obsession. With a tongue-in-cheek title tempting fate, Simple Town’s first film in their 10-year lifespan is seemingly aware of this pipeline. A sharp 90-minute mash-up of cringecore and horror, Big Break finds the real-life sketch group playing themselves in a triumphant horror comedy that finds plenty of laugh-out-loud moments in a wild night of thunderstorms and serial killing.
Written and directed by Simple Town’s Ian Faria and Sam Lanier, respectively, Big Break excels because it knows it is a comedy first and a horror film second, relishing all the awkward tension in its amusing premise: three friends (Caro Yost, Felipe Di Poi, and Will Niedmann) travel to a remote house to convince their ex comedy partner (Lanier), who has since left them behind for Hollywood, to cast them in his new movie — and a killer just happens to be lurking in the woods.
Simple Town
Carving a real niche by thrusting a real-life comedy group into an autofictional horror film, Big Break is charged with a loose, improvisational energy and carried by the stellar chemistry of the four-member collective. There are plenty of set pieces that have the feel of a sketch, like a scene where the friends scroll through a streaming service populated by gems such as Gravel Don’t Give Back (“Trent keeps to himself, until human traffickers move into his small town,” the caption reads), or the moral squabbling that ensues when the 32-year-old Felipe reveals that he’s seeing an undergrad (Anora’s Ivy Wolk).
While Big Break leans heavily into the latter element of its horror-comedy blend, the thunder, rain, and Alex Bliss’ atmospheric cinematography give the film the requisite eerie ambience to make sure its slasher elements don’t feel undercooked in favour of the humour. In fact, when the group finally faces the killer, the chaos of the interactions, lit by lightning strikes, only makes the comedy hit harder.
Deserving of the outcome its title promises, Big Break leverages the proven chemistry of its stars/producers to deliver a standout indie horror comedy.
Big Break held its world premiere at the Fantasia International Film Festival.