Sci-Fi Bulletin: Exploring the Universes of SF, Fantasy, Horror and Spy-fi!

Alasdair Stuart finds a new horror movie set to pay tribute to a classic…

Released in 1983, The Big Chill is an ensemble comedy drama whose cast reads like a roll call of future greats. Meg Tilly, Kevin Kline, William Hurt, Glenn Close, Jeff Goldblum and an array of others star as a group of friends reunited by the suicide of one of their own. In a moment of deep early career weirdness, Alex, the friend who killed himself, is played by Kevin Costner in an early role. He had a major flashback towards the end of the movie, which ended up being cut meaning Costner’s entire role in the movie was, essentially, playing a corpse. Director Lawrence Kasdan felt so bad about this he cast Costner in Silverado and the rest is history.

I mention all this because according to THR, there’s an upcoming horror comedy called The Big Kill about a group of friends and their families sharing a remote cabin after a funeral. When a killer begins stalking them the darkest elements of their pasts emerge. It’s so, so clearly a The Big Chill parody, from name and the reported use of ’90s music down to premise and the ‘skewering of Generation X culture’ reported to be at the centre of it. But it’s being reported like it’s not a parody and… it… is it me? It can’t just be me.

Todd Berger, best known for recent Netflix Halloween movie The Curse of Bridge Hollow is directing and the script is by Emmy award winning Daily Show writer Daniel Radosh. The cast is led by Skeet Ulrich, beloved in these parts for his Scream and Jericho roles among others, along with Alicia Witt seen recently in LongLegs, Jolene Blalock (best know for Enterprise) and Megan Suri from this year’s excellent Companion. Also in there are the likes of Napoleon Dynamite’s Jon Heder, Pete Holmes of Woman of the Hour and a Dropout regular and Natasha Leggero of The Do-Over. It’s a great cast! It’s a great idea! It’s a riff on The Big Chill! It’s starting production soon!