Editorials
‘Club Dread’ – Revisiting Broken Lizard’s Slasher Comedy
It’s reasonable to say that Scream (1996) was the inspiration, albeit an indirect one, for all the spoof movies we saw back in the 2000s. Were it not for Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson’s meta-horror slasher, there would be no Scary Movie (2000). And if there had been no Scary Movie, that parade of pointed parodies would have possibly never happened. Having said that, though, Broken Lizard’s Club Dread (2004) is not a bona fide send-up of horror or slashers.
Self-awareness, at least in regard to horror movies, is mostly absent from this killer comedy. It seems odd not lean into what was trending, but in retrospect, Broken Lizard made the right choice.
In a 2004 interview with Fangoria, Club Dread director and star Jay Chandrasekhar emphasized that his movie “is not a parody.” Chandrasekhar then added how the story wasn’t “self-referential like [that of] Scream,” and how the characters “don’t mention the horror film genre.” So, right away, Club Dread was standing out from the crowd, and it was even a smidge ahead of the whole spoof explosion. Arguably, that influx of lampooning and low-hanging humor doesn’t begin with Not Another Teen Movie (2001) or the Scary Movie series; the second of which already had two sequels in the bag before Club Dread’s release. No, the surge in question largely happened towards the end of the aughts. These titles include the likes of Epic Movie (2007), Superhero Movie (2008), and Vampires Suck (2010). It wasn’t really until the following decade, and after passé efforts like The Starving Games (2013) delivered the final nail in the coffin, that the craze died.
That saturation of theatrical satires was generally more successful than not, whereas Club Dread didn’t do as well. This came as a bit of a surprise since Broken Lizard’s previous comedy, Super Troopers (2001), was a sleeper hit. Yet, the fans have to remember something important: by 2004, the slasher revival was essentially dunzo, and it was soon to be superseded by new horror trends (splatter flicks, remakes, J-Horror). In all honesty, Scary Movie had all but killed the slasher subgenre by deriding it to death. So much so that the subsequent sequels had to find new targets (and not just from horror).
The cast of Club Dread finds something on the beach.
So, if Scary Movie had the horror satire covered back then, and most people mistook Club Dread as another parody of the genre, then it’s no wonder this comedy underperformed. Even the number-one new movie from that opening weekend, an Ashley Judd thriller called Twisted, was a big flop. As a reminder, The Passion of the Christ was still making a killing in theaters. However, it’s not as if the critics were all singing the praises of Club Dread. The New York Times review did more harm than good with its assessment; Dave Kehr called it “a disappointingly routine horror movie spoof that follows the well-worn path of the Scream and Scary Movie franchises.” The worst part of reviews like this is the misunderstanding of the creators’ intent—one that Broken Lizard tried, but failed, to prevent. Does the movie ignore slasher tropes altogether? Of course not, although it’s done in a way that doesn’t require winking at the audience or finger-pointing.
There were plenty of opportunities to mock the horror genre in Club Dread. Broken Lizard said as much when explaining why they ultimately went in a different direction. “The more you [poke fun at the conventions], the less invested an audience is in the fate of the characters,” Paul Soter told Fangoria. He also added how “it was important to go straight, because [they] were very aware of the kind of film [they] didn’t want to make.” By that, he meant another parody riddled with self-awareness and pop culture references, both of which can take viewers out of the moment.
As much as Broken Lizard wanted to make a comedy within the horror genre, they weren’t willing to sacrifice thrills. Interestingly, Chandrasekhar, Soter, and the other Broken Lizard members (Kevin Heffernan, Steve Lemme, and Erik Stolhanske) singled out The Return of the Living Dead (1985) as something to strive for in their own work. They loved the idea of a horror movie where the situation is serious, but the characters are funny, and your amusement is based on their reactions.
Brittany Daniel, Jordan Ladd and Steve Lemme in Club Dread.
Now, it would be a mistake to say Club Dread is innovative. That is not the case here, seeing as how the basic plot sounds unremarkable on paper. An island resort’s staff and guests are all picked off by the mysterious assailant whose identity is withheld until the end of the movie. Even with all the adult characters, the tropical backdrop and the humored execution, storytelling is not one of Club Dread’s strong points. In that sense, Broken Lizard are spoofing slashers simply by taking bits and pieces of past movies, and distilling them into a no-frills premise. It’s only once the comedy troupe and their collaborators add their personal touches to the material does this movie feel a lot more effective, not to mention memorable.
On top of all the distinct and colorful personalities in the movie, there was a surprising amount of love and care for the kills. On this front, Broken Lizard leaned hard into the practical effects and makeup. And one of the more impressive instances has to be the severed-head-on-a-turntable piece, which involved one of the actors crawling up into an empty cabinet and sticking his head through. This stroke of genius came after they opted out of using a fake noggin, too. As for the rest of the movie, it’s about as bloody as an American slasher could be in the early 2000s. The carnage is nothing compared to what was to come in the genre, but it’s serviceable. By the way, anyone who thinks the unrated version yields more of the red stuff will probably end up disappointed; you’re better off sticking to the theatrical cut. The movie was already a bit overlong before they went and restored an abandoned subplot.
While pulling something of a genre switch wasn’t the absolute kiss of death, adding horror to the mix obviously didn’t pan out for Broken Lizard. They returned to more straightforward comedy after this experiment. Nevertheless, Club Dread has enough quotable lines and moments to remember it by, and Bill Paxton as a send-up of Jimmy Buffet is worth the price of admission alone. And for those who can’t quite leave the resort yet, there is always the cast and crew commentary tracks on the DVD (yeah, still no Blu-ray). Those are just as enjoyable as the movie itself, perhaps even more so.
The killer appears in Club Dread.
Some movies are just so beloved that you can experience them through cultural osmosis without ever sitting down to actually watch them. From loving parodies to meticulous recreations of iconic scenes, memorable filmmaking lives on even after the curtains close on the silver screen. And when it comes to horror, few films can compete with the massive impact that Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining had on popular culture as a whole.
Whether or not you think the flick is a good adaptation of Stephen King’s seminal novel, 1980’s The Shining slowly but surely grew into one of the most influential genre movies ever made, inspiring everything from surprisingly heartfelt sequels to classic episodes of The Simpsons. However, not all The Shining references are created equal, and today I’d like to shine a light on six unexpected homages to Kubrick’s iconic film.
In this list, we’ll be focusing on references and Easter eggs that either came out of the blue or came from creators that you wouldn’t expect to be fans of this classic ghost story. That being said, don’t forget to comment below with your own favorite references to the Torrance family and the Overlook Hotel if you think we missed a particularly memorable one.
With that out of the way, onto the list!
5. A Nightmare on FaceTime – South Park (2012)
Regardless of the brand’s iffy reputation among former employees, the death of Blockbuster Video was a serious blow to fans of physical media. Of course, some folks were more affected by this than others, and South Park’s Randy Marsh definitely took things a little too far in the twelfth episode of the show’s sixteenth season.
Titled A Nightmare on FaceTime, the main plot of this 2012 story is a surprisingly faithful recreation of The Shining where Randy purchases an empty Blockbuster store and begins to go mad once he realizes that his investment may not have been a very good idea due to the rise of streaming and the now-defunct RedBox storefronts.
4. The Overlook Hotel Level – Ready Player One (2018)
I was never really a fan of Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One, so I viewed Stephen Spielberg’s divisive adaptation of the novel as an improvement over the source material despite having its own narrative issues. In fact, I actually prefer how Spielberg changed the story by removing several references to his own work and replacing a lengthy Blade Runner detour with an over-the-top homage to The Shining.
A CGI-heavy recreation of the film’s most iconic moments that feels like a big-budget ghost train ride set within the Overlook Hotel, this intense sequence is more of a recreation of the freaky aesthetics of The Shining rather than its mind-bending narrative. However, it’s still fun to see Spielberg make a heartfelt tribute to a filmmaker that was once his close personal friend.
3. IKEA Singapore Halloween Ad (2014)
It makes sense that commercials don’t typically borrow from the horror genre, as it might be a bad idea to scare away potential customers, but some references are just too much fun to pass up.
That’s probably why the publicists behind this Ikea ad from Singapore were allowed to turn their commercial into a genuinely unsettling recreation of Danny’s tricycle scene from The Shining. After all, nobody cares if your store is haunted so long as it offers late-night shopping hours and a large selection of merchandise that you can become lost in forever and ever…
2. The End of ‘Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality’ – Community (2014)
Community is no stranger to recreating iconic movie moments within the show, and the series had previously tackled horror tropes in episodes like the fan-favorite Epidemiology. However, the most laugh-out-loud moment on this particular list comes from a brief gag towards the end of the season five episode ‘Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality’.
The majority of this episode has nothing to do with scary movies, but there’s a brief subplot involving supporting character Chang and a possible encounter with ghosts that leads him to question his own existence. This subplot culminates in the episode’s hilarious ending where the camera zooms in on a black-and-white photograph of Chang in period clothing at some kind of celebration, just like Jack Nicholson at the end of The Shining.
However, the picture’s subtitle eventually reveals that it’s merely a conveniently placed keepsake from the ‘Old Timey Photo Club’.
1. The Overlook Hedge Maze Sequence – Zootopia 2 (2025)
Disney movies are pretty far removed from both the gruesome horror of Stephen King and the heady filmmaking of Stanley Kubrick, so I don’t think anyone was expecting the climax of last year’s Zootopia sequel to take place in an animated version of the snowy hedge maze from The Shining.
In this unexpectedly intense sequence, friend-turned-villain Pawbert Lynxley (an unhinged lynx cat played by Andy Samberg) chases our protagonists through a creepy labyrinth in a loving recreation of Jack Nicholson’s icy demise outside the Overlook Hotel. The actual ending here might be a little more child-friendly than what’s being referenced, but it’s amazing that the filmmakers were able to push the horror elements as far as they did – especially since the scene doesn’t really have anything to do with the rest of the movie.
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