Yes, someone is making a “Cotton Eye Joe” slasher

We have officially reached “Cotton Eye Joe” as a serial killer, and I am not even mad about it.

Production began in Illinois this past week on a new action-horror movie called “Cotton Eye Joe,” starring Bill Moseley and Sean Gunn. Nick Merola is directing his first feature from a screenplay he co-wrote with Brandon Weavil. Cassidy Terracian, Brian Dole, Eloise Lola Gordon and Moses Jones are also in the cast.

Four friends break down on an isolated country road, head toward abandoned farmland looking for refuge and end up awakening the legend of Cotton Eye Joe. Night falls, a serial killer starts hunting them, and apparently the old folk-song name now belongs to somebody you absolutely do not want finding you in a field.

The Rednex version from 1994 is what most people are going to hear in their heads immediately, but “Cotton-Eyed Joe” existed as an American folk song long before that recording. The new film is using that older folklore as raw material for a modern slasher rather than adapting the music video that terrorized every school dance in the ’90s.

Bill Moseley is a very good sign for the tone. Between Chop-Top in “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2” and Otis Driftwood in Rob Zombie’s Firefly films, the man has spent decades proving that respectable behavior is not really his horror specialty.

SC Films is handling international sales ahead of TIFF. No release date has been announced yet.

If Cotton Eye Joe spent all these years asking where he came from and where he went, apparently the answer is Illinois with Bill Moseley.