Best Friends with the Devil
2025 · 10m · United States
Directed by Hugo De Sousa
Genres: comedy, mystery, thriller
Tones: dark, darkly comic, tense
Lola searches for her missing best friend with the help of a stranger who may know more than he's letting on.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A missing-friend thriller that weaponizes dark comedy and stranger-danger tropes into something genuinely off-kilter—the kind of tonal whiplash most scouts would flag as 'confused,' but De Sousa's clearly steering it intentionally into the fun of not knowing whose side we're on.
De Sousa demonstrates assured control of genre convention, balancing thriller mechanics with comedic counterpoint in a way that recalls the formal precision of Safdie-adjacent tension cinema, though the hybrid tone risks fragmenting what could be a cleaner thematic argument.
The real work here is in the casting and the stranger's silences—there's a performance choice (or a choice *not* to perform) that does all the heavy lifting, turning a premise that could be generic into something that hinges entirely on what the actor withholds.
Reviews
Best Friends with the Devil, the latest short film from writer-director Hugo de Sousa, explores themes of the complexity of friendships and how treasured relationships can become toxic. Best Friends with the Devil begins with a deceptively simple premise.
Festivals
- SXSW Film Festival 2026, World premiere
- Palm Springs ShortFest 2026, Selection
- Fantasia Film Festival 2026, Selection
- Salute Your Shorts 2026, Selection