Killer Movie may not be the most famous '00s horror around, but it is the lone effort from The Big Bang Theory star Kaley Cuoco - and a surprisingly solid horror-comedy, too. Released in 2008, Killer Movie is a meta-slasher that sees a television crew picked off one by one after they set up shop in a small town to document a local sports team’s rise to prominence. Despite being largely forgotten, it boasted an impressive cast that includes The Vampire Diaries’ Paul Wesley, Leighton Meester, and The Big Bang’s Kaley Cuoco.
While Meester’s role is minor, Wesley and Cuoco are the movie’s lead characters; a smug hotshot producer and his Paris Hilton-spoofing celebrity star, respectively. Although Killer Movie is no Scream, as far as self-referential slasher movies go, it is far from terrible. At the very least, Killer Movie is undeserving of the mere 19% it currently boasts on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes. Killer Movie’s early stretches are a touch slow since the movie takes its time establishing the crew who are moving to this small town before starting to hunt down and kill them off.
It’s here Kaley Cuoco gets to shine as Killer Movie’s comic relief, and the actor doesn’t disappoint fans with a solid, surprisingly endearing parody of Hilton/Jessica Simpson/Kim Kardashian-esque reality television stars. Wesley also strikes an agreeable balance between sleazy and sincere as Killer Movie’s antihero, though the film does struggle with settling on a consistent tone. These early interludes are breezy satirical comedy, but once the killings start, it shifts into darker, Friday the 13th-style slasher territory. It is an uneasy tonal balance like Get Shorty meets Halloween, but one that doesn’t entirely derail the viewing experience.
Director Jeff Fisher had a background in real-life reality TV, helming episodes of Real World and The Simple Life, before making his directorial debut. The influence of his earlier career shows in Killer Movie, which features frequent pitch-perfect recreations of ‘00s reality television’s gaudy, over-the-top aesthetic. His characters have an easy chemistry with each other although the plot does leave a lot to be desired, and the eventual non-reveal of an ending is a letdown. Despite the film’s broadly comic satirical bent, this gory R-rated slasher also includes some genuinely thrilling chase scenes and while the kills are not always inventive, it has a meaner streak than its earlier scenes suggest.
Kaley Cuoco never returned to the horror genre after this early outing was swiftly forgotten upon release, although Wesley and Meester both worked in the genre again in the years since. Fisher moved back to reality television, although he did helm the similar television movie Killer Reality in 2013 (a fitting choice, since much of Killer Movie plays like an above-average TV movie rather than an indie horror). Meanwhile, audiences and critics alike seemingly rejected and subsequently forgot about Killer Movie, which appears to have underperformed for the same reason New Nightmare failed but Scream succeeded, as Fisher’s film expected viewers to both despise its cast of Hollywood phonies while paradoxically still root for them to make it out alive. However, as of 2021, the most recent credit on Fisher’s IMDB is “Killer Movie: Director’s Cut,” meaning fans of The Big Bang Theory’s Kaley Cuoco may soon see a return to the world of this underrated outing.