Longform shorts need their time to shine as well, especially since they’re in a space that is too short for a feature and too long for a short. At Panic Fest, we’ve been given a bunch of awesome longform shorts, one of which is Hide.
Hide hosts a bedtime routine that is meant to keep a father and daughter alive amongst unfathomable terrors in their town.
Hide
It’s so funny to me how horror has this innate ability to make horrifying things the norm. I imagine myself as the characters in Hide, me as a parent reminding my kid what to do in strange cases like this. It is very much not normal, but in this world, it is. Here they are, starting each night with an expansive set of directions for every scenario — failure to follow them will result in them being “taken” by some groaning force that enters the town’s homes at night.
Not seeing the monster is the obvious scare here, but knowing that it has happened to these two before (the mom is not in the picture, a failure on her part) and waiting for the siren warning to call every night is worse. Then one night, a beloved stuffed animal is missing from the routine, and everything changes; what happens after is the daughter’s brave attempt at facing the deadly intruders.
What Hide does is exactly that: hiding the big bad, the reasoning for the routine, the deaths, and the aftermath. But that actually works better than having all of the answers because — as I’ve said many times — your imagination is always worse. On top of that, this short doesn’t need to show it all. Everything is shown or said in enough chunks that we are completely filled in on the situation.
And although I would want to see more, the beauty in Hide is how much is left out. We come in in the middle of the action but don’t miss a beat. It stops just short of the climax, still giving the viewer room to establish their own. Hide hits the sweet spot for storytelling. My only wish is that we knew more about the clean-up crew that visits houses in the morning; the paperwork attached to their visit makes the situation seem all the more sinister.
With likeable characters, a simple premise, and little tidbits of effect work (black slime on a watch, growls, and footsteps), Hide shows that familial love keeps us safe, but it also keeps us scared.
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