Nerves
2022 · 6m · USA
Directed by Sam Straley
A young man works up the nerve to approach an attractive cashier, only to spiral into a panic when the moment finally arrives. A short, awkward comedy about the small terror of trying to flirt.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
It's a premise so microscopically observed it circles back to something genuinely strange—the entire emotional architecture of romantic paralysis played out in real time by the guy who wrote it, which is either navel-gazing or genius, and I honestly can't tell which yet.
Straley's restraint with the form—minimal setting, escalating internal stakes—positions this squarely in the lineage of character-driven comedy shorts that trust silence and proximity over plot machinery; the formal risk is whether that restraint reads as craft or just limitation.
The decision to have Straley perform his own spiral, uncut across a single location, transforms what could be sitcom-broad into something genuinely anxious and lived—it's a structural choice that does the entire emotional work, and it's exactly right.
Reviews
She's Cute, He's Panicking!
A romantic coming-of-age short [Straley] wrote, directed, and starred in, depicting a young man's struggle to muster courage and approach an attractive cashier.