Summary
InReunion, a group of former classmates gather for their twenty-year reunion to reminisce about the glory days when they got stuck in a massive snow storm. Although most are able to escape the weather, a few decide to stay the night in their rich fellow alumni, Matthew’s mansion. The next morning, they discover Matthew’s body. Realizing one of them must be the killer, they begin to investigate and try to discover who murdered Matthew when all of them have a motive.
Reunionexcels as a true ensemble comedy with every actor bringing something unique to their performance with different styles of comedy. Lil Rel Howery and Jillian Bell lead a phenomenally funny cast through the hilarious murder mystery, includingThe Vampire Diaries’Nina DobrevandGossip Girl’s Chace Crawford. Director Chris Nelson is able to find the perfect balance between comedy, mystery, and suspense while also capturing the dynamics between these characters that allude to the two decades of history they all share.
Lil Rel Howery’s 10 Best Movies Ranked, According To IMDb
Lil Rel Howery first came to movie audiences in Jordan Peele’s Get Out. However, he has appeared in several highly-rated films like Free Guy.
Screen RantinterviewedReuniondirector Chris Nelson about his new movie. Hediscussed how Nina Dorbev, Michael Hitchcock, Chase Crawford, and the rest of the cast fit into the ensemble. He also explained the importance of improvisation and revealed the types of movies he had on his mind while makingReunion.
Chris Nelson Has Been Working On Reunion For 6 Years: “It Was Before Knives Out”
Nelson explained how each cast member fits into the ensemble, including what they brought toReunion. He also shared why improvisation was such an important part of the creative process for him and the cast while making this R-rated wacky style of comedy. He broke down why he gave them the freedom to play after working out who the characters were in the preparation process.
Chris Nelson: First and foremost, casting is one of my favorite parts of the process of making a movie. I find it such a fun puzzle to put together, and there’s nothing better to do that with than an ensemble comedy like this, especially something where you have all these motley cast of characters and crew that are suddenly thrown together and thrust together in this Agatha Christie whodunit. And yet it’s a wild sort of reunion comedy at the same time. And LiL Rel Howery was really the first person that we brought onto the project once I was sort of working on it. One of the original producers and I just were both real fans of Get Out and just loved Rel in that movie.
There was just something about his sort of enthusiastic style of comedy, especially that he had in that movie that just kept reminding me of the character and just felt like it would be such a cool, fresh, exciting sort of way into a movie like this. So that was really the beginning of it. And then Jillian Bell, she was really the first person that I had in mind, or I wouldn’t say the first person. I kept thinking about her over and over and over when I was putting lists together. I just kept thinking about her and she was always just my first choice to do this. And it turns out, when we sent the script to her, she loves murder mysteries. Clue was one of her favorite movies.
And by the way, when we were working on this movie, it was before Knives Out, it was before Afterparty before any of that, Willie and Jake started working on the script 10 years ago. I came on over six years ago to the project. So it was one of those things where we were all like, this is so fun and exciting, and Jillian, I think she’s so great in the movie. So the two of them really kind of anchored it. And then I kind of flushed out the rest of the ensemble from there. Billy Magnussen was somebody I was always a fan of, and he was so funny in Game Night and just always stands out to me in ensembles. Nina Dobrev to me, I find her so compelling on camera, and I’d never seen her do an R-rated comedy like this. She did this great read and I was like, that just felt really exciting.
Jamie Chung was somebody who I thought would be so wonderful off of Billy and just has a certain wittiness this that almost kind of felt like the rom-com element that we kind of needed to the movie. Michael Hitchcock is obviously so great in all of the Christopher Guest stuff, like Best In Show. He’s such a funny, funny, great actor. Chace Crawford was just sort of thecherry on top from The Boys, obviously. I felt like I knew he could do this, but I just hadn’t seen him quite do the character before. Ever since he was the kid from Gossip Girl, it’s like, “It’s Chace Crawford.” So it was great to have him as part of it.
You are working with so many geniuses in their craft, and I’m sure that they brought a lot that wasn’t on the page to the screen. Can you talk about some of the improv moments we find in the film, especially with Lil Rel, and I’m going to say Jillian steals like every scene she’s in, she’s so good in this film.
Chris Nelson: I love all of them. I think they’re all so good. I was very certain that I wanted to lean into improv a lot making this movie. Some of that was because I’ve directed different types of comedy in different ways, and I just have found, especially with this style of R-rated sort of comedy and just this style of fun that the looser you can be with getting actors out and trying just a bunch of stuff on set and having fun with it, the better it is really in the edit and the more room you have. And I just think you can sometimes feel that when you can kind of loosen up.
It was always, for me, very important to really do a lot of preparation where we understood the characters and we found the voice and everyone knew what movie we were in. And then when we were shooting, once we were getting a lot out in the script. We were doing a lot of improv, and it was very much encouraging the actors to be working with each other in between scenes and setups and finding stuff together. They all really rallied and brought so much to the table.
Reunion Pairs Well With “Movies Like Bridesmaids And The Breakfast Club”
Nelson broke down why he believes audiences connect with the murder mystery genre. However, he also revealed that murder mystery movies weren’t on his mind when he was working onReunioninstead,“I was thinking about movies like Bridesmaids and The Breakfast Club when I was making this movie.”
Chris Nelson: I think the whodunit and the murder mystery just adds such a layer of fun to a plot. I think with comedy, especially this type of comedy, I will say what I think is great about our movie, Reunion, is it’s different than all of those things you’ve mentioned. We are a much more just have a great time, R rated type comedy, ensemble comedy, we’re not really quite as intellectual or heady as some of the other movies.
We’re really just like, this is a reunion comedy, let’s go. So I think there’s an element of having the whodunit be kind of a structure that allows you to have really different characters but still have a lot of fun. I was thinking about movies like Bridesmaids and The Breakfast Club when I was making this movie. Movies that have really fun characters that give you nuance, and they all feel different, but they’re still part of this movie and you’re having a good time with them.
The truth is that a lot of times with those type of movies, it’s hard to think about what the concept is that still gives you enough of a plot engine. So I think what murder mysteries do is they give people something to hang on to while the fun is happening, if that makes sense.
I like doing a double feature in my household watching movies that pair well together. So if you were to pairReunionwith any other film for a double feature that you’d like to personally watch, what would that film be?
Chris Nelson: Oh, that’s such a good question. I don’t know,maybe The Breakfast Clubor Bridesmaids or Clue.
I mean, Lil Rel also saidThe Breakfast Club. I think that’s a great pairing as well.
Chris Nelson: That’s great. I love that Rel said that. Yeah, I think so too.
Now, I also love the timeframe that this reunion or that the students all graduated in, 2001’s right around the time I would’ve graduated high school. And I love that we have some of those musical cues that brought me right back into that mode. What was playing on your playlist on repeat when you were in high school?
Chris Nelson: It was Run-D.M.C. It was the age of the CDs and Run-D.M.C.’s CD was my first thing that I bought. I remember I had saved up and I was so excited to have my CD player, and that was really one of the first things that I bought. So I probably have to say that.
Reunion Director Reveals “It Was Only A Four Week Shoot”
In honor of the high school reunion element of the movie, Nelson also shared his vote for a special list of superlatives. Nelson also shared details about the mansion where they filmedReunion, including the fact that all the snow was fake because they filmed for four weeks in the summer.
Chris Nelson: Probably Jillian Bell. Nina too, but Jillian was a great diplomat too. So I guess it depends on which way you’re looking at an escape room. I mean, Nina, this is true. It’s hard to say.
Who would be the most likely to make you kind of crack up laughing on set?
Chris Nelson: Michael Hitchcock. Michael’s sort of a writer. I mean, Michael came up with a couple of lines in the movie that he threw to other people or characters. He’s just a very funny guy. Very funny guy.
Now, something else I love in this movie is the setting. I love the snowbound mansion because I feel it adds a whole new element to the film and also feels like a character itself, the mansion does. Can you talk about working on that location?
Chris Nelson: Well, that was something that I had wished that we would found a lot earlier than we did. It was very, very tough location to find because like you said, we needed it to do so many things and we needed a lot of space to be able to work in and to be able to have basically our whole cast and crew and everybody sort of bunker down in this house for, I mean, it was a quick shoot. It was only a four week shoot, but we only had a few days that we weren’t shooting outside this house and we were shooting in the peak of Covid.
So we needed something that was going to really be our net, and it was a very tough thing to be able to end up finding. But we found it at the end and it was really a house that was in the middle of nowhere. I mean, we shot it in Calabasas. So all the snow, everything you see in the movie is something that’s created and we were shooting in the middle of the summer.
So there’s that element to it too, which was really fun. There was something pretty amazing about watching it all of a sudden snow in a hundred degree Calabasas, California weather.
About Reunion
Snowbound at their high school reunion, former classmates uncover a murder and scramble to identify the killer among them before they’re all iced out for good.
Reunion
Cast
Reunion is a mystery thriller directed by Chris Nelson, set during a high school reunion where a murder unfolds amidst a snowstorm. The guests, trapped in an isolated mansion, must navigate the tension and suspicion as they uncover the truth behind the crime.
