Hide Your Crazy
2023 · 14m · United States
Directed by Austin Kase
Genres: comedy, horror, romance
Tones: darkly comic, surreal, tense
Iris is hiding a supernatural secret from her boyfriend; when he surprises her for her birthday, they have to face it together as a couple — a horror rom-com about the fear of being truly seen.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Horror rom-com feels like consensus comfort food — the hook (hiding a supernatural secret) is solid, but the execution probably plays it safer than the premise deserves, landing somewhere between earnest and winking instead of genuinely disorienting.
The tonal architecture here is formally ambitious — balancing dread, intimacy, and comedy requires a sharp editorial hand, and Kase seems aware of the lineage (body horror meets relationship drama) even if the film doesn't quite resolve its formal contradictions.
There's a specific choice buried in this premise about what moment reveals the secret, and whether that reveal lands as absurd or genuinely vulnerable will hinge entirely on how Kase cuts between reaction and consequence — that single decision is the whole film.