Big Break

Bluesky

Want your comedy troupe to break through? Why not make a film about what happens to them when it has all broken down, they’ve gone their separate ways, three of them are bitter about the Hollywood success of the fourth, and that fourth member of the group has gone on to become a serial killer? Big Break, which screened as part of Fantasia 2026, is your chance to get to know Simple Town, and if you like what they deliver on the big screen, there’s plenty more where that came from.

There’s no spoiler here for viewers, who get plenty of information from a slasher-pastiche prologue to figure out what’s going on in the house that Sam Lanier (who also wrote the script – everyone here is playing a version of themselves) refers to as his ‘cabin in the woods, as it were’. We subsequently learn that Sam has assets worth $6m after writing the script for a major Hollywood film, though that may not be quite as glamorous as we are led to believe. At any rate, when he contacts his former comedy colleagues to invite them to a reunion at his place, they’re excited by the prospect, not because they’ve missed him, or each other, but because they hope to persuade him to give them parts in his next production.

The bulk of the film plays out like a domestic drama as the three scheming guests make themselves comfortable in Sam’s (second) home, he tries and fails to impress them, and they go through the routines of spending an evening together: dining, drinking, reminiscing, relaxing (or trying to) in front of the TV. Culture clash comedy is drawn from the way that Sam’s experiences in Hollywood have changed him, with digs at wellness culture and the bitchiness of insecure celebrity. Though he might seem the most sympathetic member of the group, Felipe (Felipe Da Poi Tamargo) also finds himself under attack when Caroline (Caroline Yost) finds out that he has a much younger girlfriend.

Whilst all this is happening, multiple clues emerge to Sam’s other life , missed every time because everyone is so self-absorbed and eager to interpret events in line with their own ambitions. The escape of one of his imprisoned victims, however, ups the ante and carries the film into a farcical final act full of further misinterpretations but now also redolent with impulsive violence and more explicit expressions of greed. Yost comes through this well, easy able to embrace the wilder vicissitudes of the plot, but the others don’t quite share her confidence and overall it doesn’t quite have the punch that it needs.

The real test here will come down to how you feel about the characters, all of whom are unpleasant but perhaps sympathetically so. Caroline feels that Sam owes his success to material he stole from the group; and Felipe’s girlfriend, regardless of her age, seems more mature than anyone else we meet. It’s not altogether successful as a film, feeling more like a work in progress, but it shows off the chemistry of the troupe and may still win them some fans.

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