Nick Frost Is a Sitcom Dad Gone Insane in Bloody First Trailer for Krazy House
We’re coming up on the 10 year anniversary of Adult Swim’s influential comedy short Too Many Cooks, that demented 11-minute descent into madness that was couched in parody of classic 1980s sitcom tropes, but its obvious influence refuses to dissipate in the worlds of either horror or comedy. It’s impossible to miss the role that it clearly played in the inspiration of the upcoming Krazy House, a Dutch action-horror-comedy hybrid that just released its gratuitous first trailer online, days before an arrival on various digital platforms on Oct. 4, 2024.
Krazy House stars English comedy icon and frequent Edgar Wright collaborator Nick Frost as Bernie, the patriarch of a conservative religious household in what is clearly the style of a 1980s American family sitcom in the style of say, Growing Pains. He’s joined by Alicia Silverstone as his wife, and actor Kevin Connolly intriguingly cast solely as “Jesus,” implying perhaps an unusually active presence by the Son of Man in the family’s lifestyle. That life is thrown into chaos when a trio of Russian criminals, working under the guise of Three Stooges-esque repairmen, commandeer and begin wrecking the house in search of some kind of hidden treasure, which leads Bernie to finally snap and enact a campaign of vengeance against them. We can clearly see from the trailer below that this tonal shift is communicated through changes in the visual style presented by directors Steffen Haars and Flip van der Kuil, literally going from the 4:3 aspect ratio common to television of that era to a modern wide screen, dramatically lit alternative.
That’s a concept that might have felt fresh to the average genre obsessive a decade ago, but is hardly likely to stand out as much today–not after AMC gave us two seasons of Kevin Can F**k Himself, exploring the dark intersection between hokey and realistic, psychologically motivated portrayals of stock sitcom characters in the process of breaking bad. Krazy House looks more like it’s trying to get by purely on the strength of shock value and stoner appreciation for absurdity, bolting on the gory ultraviolence of a series like Damien Leone’s Terrifier and hoping that Frost will have the physical charisma to pull it all off. Early reactions have not been particularly reassuring–the film scored mostly negative appraisals when it premiered at the Midnight section of the Sundance Film Festival, with criticism revolving around its overwhelming excess. Coupled with a level of violence that seems destined to have garnered the film an NC-17 rating, it’s little wonder we’re seeing it go straight to VOD.
Perhaps Krazy House will go on to establish its own kooky little cult, but it feels like the legacy of Too Many Cooks still looms large. Check out the full trailer below.