A few months ago, I reviewed The Parenting, a sharp, witty, and very entertaining horror-comedy, and I examined the horror-comedy spectrum and how different movies position themselves at points throughout that spectrum. It usually makes for a very amusing blend of genres, with the horror and comedy balancing each other out well. I Don’t Understand You is one of the most perplexing movies I have seen in a while. Touted as a horror-comedy about a couple vacationing in Italy for their anniversary, only for a comedy of errors to unfold, I was expecting some sort of La Cage Aux Folles type of setup, with plenty of slapstick humor, likable characters being pushed way out of their comfort zone in the name of love, and all ending happily ever after. What I got was an almost characterless movie full of false starts and dark turns that felt uncomfortable even for something claiming to be part-horror.
What Is ‘I Don’t Understand You’ About?

The movie opens with Dom (Nick Kroll) and Cole (Andrew Rannells) sitting in their beautiful apartment making a video application for an adoption agency, answering various pre-set questions and agonizing over their word choices and how every little detail could be the make-or-break of their happy family. They’ve been victims of adoption fraud in the past, so a lot is hinging on this, and they seem like a sweet couple, so we’re rooting for them to be accepted. Amanda Seyfried pops up briefly as a woman named Candice, who is eight months pregnant and looking for the right family for her baby. She is taken with the couple and offers for them to be the fathers of her child. Everything seems to be looking up. In celebration of their ten-year anniversary, the couple jet off to Rome, where they are met by an old family friend of Dom’s, who — much to their thinly-veiled annoyance — has taken it upon himself to make them dinner reservations with an old woman, Zia Luciana, in her rural “restaurant” which has long since closed down, effectively making it a trip to a stranger’s house for dinner. On their way to Zia’s, their car gets stuck in a ditch, it starts pouring with rain — in an actual horror movie, this would be the part where they stumble upon a mad scientist’s house and get turned into a human centipede. But for all the moments that the movie feels like it’s laying the groundwork for either the comedy or horror genre, it spins its muddy wheels and then just stalls. The couple makes it to Zia’s place, having had a very strange run-in with a local who angrily drives them there, and from there, a chain reaction of misunderstandings, mistranslations, and good old-fashioned idiocy occurs that leads to Zia being killed. It’s hardly an original bit, and has been worked to great comedic effect in other movies — hell, by the halfway point I suddenly found myself musing on the effectiveness of Weekend at Bernie’s by comparison — but there is something about I Don’t Understand You that absolutely doesn’t work, and it’s deep in the DNA of the movie. For a horror-comedy, it’s not funny, and it’s not scary. It’s a very strange amalgamation of little drops of each of these things, heavily diluted within what is largely a romantic drama, and as such, every time it tries to be funny or scary, it feels out of place and uncomfortable.
‘I Don’t Understand You’ is a Horror-Comedy That Isn’t Scary or Funny

Don’t look here for a fun, heartfelt gay comedy vibe like The Birdcage, for it is largely absent of humor. It does have its moments, and it caught me off guard several times, leading me to think that it was about to get going with its real point. The structure and tone of the movie constantly gives the impression that what we have seen so far has just been set up, and surely now the horror, or the comedy, is about to start. You see little glimpses of it, but they never seem to get the movie going with any real momentum. We are to believe that this is taking place in the real world, and that these are two decent, successful, respectable guys who love each other and are willing to do what it takes to become parents. This is why some scenes that allow them to devolve into suddenly bloodthirsty psychopaths are such an out-there choice that never, ever feels right. It’s not that type of comedy, and it’s not that type of horror.

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It is surprising how truly dark this movie gets at times, and not in a fun, gallows-humor sort of way. It more so makes you sit up and go, “Wait, isn’t this meant to be a funny movie?!” The tonal dissonance is staggering, and when the credits rolled, I thought perhaps I could chalk it up to cultural differences. The movie was made in Italy with a largely Italian crew, and, of course, humor varies between nations. Italian humor is known to be darker, absurdist, and ironic. Perhaps this was just an Italian film made for English-speaking audiences that didn’t translate so well. But no, it was written and directed by two Americans. The best explanation I can come up with is that the movie is saying that Americans are not to be trusted on foreign soil, because they will just screw everything up by not integrating themselves into other cultures properly.
‘I Don’t Understand You’ Is Dark and Mean-Spirited

Image via Vertical

Writer/directors Brian Crano and David Joseph Craig are a real-life couple, and their own adopted son briefly appears as the long-awaited child of Dom and Cole in the movie. It’s clear that they put a lot of themselves into the more heartfelt aspects of the movie, and that is nice to see. Dom and Cole mostly seem like a sweet couple, which is why it’s sad to see their more ruthless characteristics come out when their shenanigans in rural Italy kick them into survival mode. By the end of the whole ordeal, you’re not really sure you like them as people anymore, let alone trust their judgment as partners or parents. There are some doors which, once opened, cannot be shut again, and their long, weird night at Zia’s house opens a lot of them. But then the movie just breezes past it all, landing the duo back where they came from, no worse off for it. A mid-credits sequence, however, shows the ramifications of their actions for the locals in Italy, and that’s when the dislike for the characters really hits. It’s all very well for them, a smart, wealthy, successful couple from L.A., to wreak havoc on the provincial population of a foreign country, leaving an absolute mess of legal and emotional trauma behind them, and then just swan off back home with basically zero consequences. I don’t find it funny that a perfectly innocent man is now framed for murder, but I guess as long as Dom and Cole get to bring a baby back to their immaculate apartment, then all’s well that ends well. I Don’t Understand You was a deflating disappointment of a movie. Every time I felt like I was getting into it, it swiped the rug out from under me, reminding me that I was watching a movie with very little character or substance, and that I was going to find almost no elements of horror or comedy here. It’s a frustrating, messy, and at times quite mean-spirited drama where decent people are treated poorly, the perpetrators prosper, and everything works out fine in the end, as long as you’re rich enough to go on the run from the Italian police.

I Don’t Understand You

An unfocused, unpleasant and unsettling movie devoid of horror or comedy.

Release Date

June 6, 2025

Runtime

96 Minutes

Director

David Joseph Craig, Brian Crano

Writers

David Joseph Craig, Brian Crano

Pros & Cons

It’s a competently made picture with nice use of location shooting in Italy.
Nick Kroll and Andrew Rannells give decent performances, despite the material.

It’s a horror-comedy with no horror and very little comedy.
The action staggers from one nonsensical set piece to another.
The movie has an unpleasant vibe and moral stance.