Austin Kase is an award-winning writer, director, and editor of short and feature films, music videos, and commercials who has recently directed the horror short “Hide Your Crazy.” The romance horror comedy and allegory for mental illness awareness has been doing well at various festivals and the up and coming filmmaker takes time out to discuss film and his love for horror.
Thanks for your time!
Thanks for having me!
For our readers, please introduce yourself.
I’m a writer/director who loves to make crowd-pleasing films with hidden depths. When I’m not doing that, I’m also an actor, particularly a voice actor whose voice has featured in a bunch of TV commercials and recently, some animation and video games.
What is horror to you, what makes a work of art one in the horror genre?
It seems obvious, but horror is about what we fear. Death’s the big one, of course, and all the many forms it may take—nuclear war, home invasions, disease, predatory animals, scary new technology. But the most interesting horror to me is about fates worse than death—losing our humanity, harming those we love, realizing our friends and neighbors secretly have it in for us, winding up truly and profoundly alone. Those are the things that really keep me up at night.
What made you want to work in horror?
What I love about horror is that it peels away a layer of safety from the audience. Truly anything is possible, and a happy ending is far from guaranteed, so you can hold the audience in a state of hyper-presence from beginning to end.
Where did you get your inspiration for “Hide Your Crazy”?
I was pitching a remake of one of my favorite movies of all time, “Cat People” (1942), which is about a young woman who transforms into a panther whenever she feels passionate or sexual emotions. It’s a silly B-movie premise, but what I love about the film is that it treats the protagonist’s predicament with a lot of psychological realism. You feel for her, and the tragedy that she can never have the love and intimacy she yearns for. My pitch was rejected, but the idea stuck with me, and years later, I finally decided to drop the cat part and spin it into something original.
Are You Working in any other genres or have aspirations to?
Yes, I was a comedy writer before I ever tried my hand at horror, and specifically I liked romantic comedies. What I discovered when I started getting into horror was that there’s a lot of overlap with rom-coms. They’re also very much about fear, specifically the fears we associate with relationships—getting hurt, getting stuck, losing our identity or our freedom, choosing the wrong life partner, having kids. It’s high stakes, scary stuff!
What would you like your legacy to be in the genre (or elsewhere)?
I’m on a mission to bring the stories into the world that only I could tell. Because if I don’t, they’ll die with me. “Hide Your Crazy” feels like a success in that regard, because it really is a strange blend of elements that reflect my particular sensibilities. No matter what genre I’m working in, I do enjoy weaving in unexpected elements and emotions that might not at first seem like they belong, but hit the audience that much more deeply as a result.
What about horror do you think is so good at communicating social commentary?
When it’s good, horror can be a nice blend of pizza and salad—there’s plenty of fatty goodness to entice audiences in the door, like special effects, jump scares, and titillation, but all these things can actually serve a deeper meaning that the audience takes with them after the credits roll. Mary Poppins was onto something when she sang “A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.” Enough food metaphors for one answer?
Who are some of the directors or writers that you look up to and who do you want to bring attention to in your field or others?
Billy Wilder is my number one. His films are almost all comedies, and yet they touch on some of the deepest and darkest sides of life, and the blend feels effortless. Plus, the guy wrote the best dialogue ever in film. A new director who I really admire is Ariane Louis-Seize, who wrote and directed this incredible new horror comedy feature called “Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person.” The title says it all! Go see it in theaters if you can.
What are you currently working on that you can tell us about?
I’m adapting Hide Your Crazy into a feature, but on top of that, I’m working on a horror comedy series that I’m very excited about, and also, surprisingly, a biblical epic! Stay tuned.
What advice do you have for aspiring filmmakers or creators?
Hard work doesn’t guarantee success, and nobody owes you squat. There’s no ladder, no timeline, and no safety net. If that’s a deal breaker, do something else. Real success in this field means getting to explore those dark inner depths and hopefully extract some treasure that brings light to someone else’s life. Everything else is out of your hands.
Yes, it’s scary and uncertain, but it’s also a privilege.