She Lies Beautiful
2020 · 9m · United States
Directed by Emmanuil Morari
Genres: dark comedy, romance, thriller
Tones: absurdist, darkly comic, provocative
Victor is a hopeless romantic serial killer — until he meets Yara, the girl of his dreams, who just won't die.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A serial killer romantic comedy where the premise *itself* is the joke—Morari flips the power dynamic so hard that love becomes the actual threat, which is exactly the kind of subversive nonsense everyone else will nervously pass on.
The film sits uncomfortably between dark comedy and genuine romance, which is formally risky; the editing strategy of playing each genre beat straight rather than winking at the audience shows considerable restraint and formal awareness.
There's a single moment—you'll know it when you see it—where Yara's refusal to die shifts from gag to something genuinely unsettling, and that tonal pivot on what feels like a breath of a performance choice is what makes the whole thing land.