How You Could Be the Murderer went from Twitter joke to meta-slasher

The creators behind the meta-slasher film You could be the murderer took a funny social media gimmick and turned it into a wild, blood-soaked comedy-horror cult hit. ““I’m really proud of the blood,” said director Brett Simmons SYFY WIRE. “Whenever we had the opportunity to splash, we splashed.”

Many slasher film viewers can imagine the victim making a heroic escape, but have you ever thought that you could be the killer? That’s the concept behind the 2018 film now streaming SYFY. When a group of camp counselors travel to the woods of Louisiana to prepare for summer, things get even worse as a murderer is on the loose. The premise enables the film to play off all of our favorite themes seen in films like this Friday The 13 Franchise, For this reason, the film was originally going to have a meta title: “Dead Counselors.”

We caught up with it You could be the murderer Director, co-writer and co-producer Simmons (2013 director). The Monkey paw), And co-Writer and co-producer Thomas P. Vitale (who is also an executive producer of the horror series). Slasher) to discuss the making of the film, a must for any slasher fan.

At its core, it’s a “slasher film where the characters are as confident as the audience watching it, without being a parody,” says Simmons. In the opening scene, frenetic consultant Sam (Fran Kranz) calls his horror fan friend Chuck (Alyson Hannigan) in hopes of getting help escaping a killer lurking in the campgrounds. Chuck gives Sam advice, but eventually suspects that Sam may be the murderer. The dialogue of this scene and the origin of the film come directly from a Twitter thread (now X).

How You could be the murderer started as a Twitter stunt

The author Sam Sykes (not to be confused with Sam from the film) was camping and jokingly tweeted about another author, Chuck Wendig (Apparently there are a lot of Easter eggs in the movie with the characters’ names) playing the role of a person in a horror movie.

Vitale described the Twitter conversation to us: “Sam tweeted: ‘It went really well, but there’s a crazy serial killer on the loose right now.’ Chuck says, “Oh… that happens sometimes.” And suddenly you’re already in this meta world with these tweets. Sam said, ‘Do you have any advice?’ They’re all dead, almost all of them.’ Chuck comes back with, ‘I hate to ask this, but are you sure YOU aren’t the murderer?'”

Vitale then presented this concept as a film, telling us that this ended up being “the first time a Twitter conversation was optioned and turned into a film.” The film does not follow a linear format as the makers wanted the Twitter conversation to take place in the middle of the plot rather than at the beginning of the film.

“Legend of the Woodcutter”: Design of the mask in You could be the murderer

When asked what the most important part of making this meta-slasher film was, Vitale and Simmons agreed: It’s the mask. The design team has created a wooden carved mask that is unique to anything we have seen so far. Because instead of making a mask with a “big, scary face,” they decided, “Simpler always gets scarier.” They made this “Legend of the Woodcutter” to associate with the murderer’s mask and weapon which was a “machete fused to the jawbone of an alligator.”

Iconic design can certainly hook you into a slasher, but according to Vitale, “the key to making the tone of a horror-comedy work is making sure the characters play it like they’re really in the situation.” To play clearly, the stars needed Hannigan’s outstanding performances (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) and wreath (The Cabin in the forest).

According to Simmons, Kranz was initially hesitant to play the role because he feared it might be a parody. Kranz and Hannigan had so much chemistry when they played best friends, but according to Simmons, they never acted in the same room. With just two days to film all of her scenes, Hannigan had limited time to do so, which is also impressive because she’s constantly waiting in line.

It takes a lot to put the finishing touches on a horror comedy, including finding the perfect music and gore. Simmons’ wife, Rebecca Simmons, is a musician, so he gave her the difficult task of composing a theme song for the specific mood they were going for. When she returned with it, Simmons was thrilled.

At the premiere, “the audience totally understood what we wanted to do and sent everyone out of the theater with the right attitude,” he said, adding that he still uses the theme song when kids trick-or-treat on Halloween.

When asked about his favorite scene, Simmons joked, “I guess it’s sick to say that I could watch the head get cut in half from the fridge over and over again, but I really could.” We’re for Hey there. It’s great. And there’s lots of blood. It’s impressive to think about filming scenes with sticky sugar blood in a bug-infested New Orleans swamp.

“I’m really grateful for this whole process,” Simmons says of the film. “I have the feeling that the film was a success across the board because of the good collaboration and the joint sprint. So I’m really proud of the film and once again very grateful.”

“You Might Be the Killer” is now streaming on SYFY.