Written and directed by David Joseph Craig and Brian Crano, I Don’t Understand You is a horror-comedy that unabashedly pushes the limits of both the horror and comedy genres. Starring Nick Kroll and Andrew Rannells as a married couple on the verge of adopting a baby, they take a Babymoon to Italy where they soon realize they are in over their heads when it comes to understanding the language, food, culture – and each other. While the fish out of water scenario provides great farcical comedy, the horror aspects slowly begin to creep in as the humor grows darker.

“We set out to write a horror movie with comedic flares,” says Craig, “but we ended up with a comedy that had horror flares. It just evolved that way.”

David Joseph Craig and Brian Crano are married in real life and are as sharp, witty and possibly as lovingly bumbling as the characters they inspired on screen. The couple met on a blind date that their agent set up for them. “It was a very interesting, Hollywood-ish way to meet,” says Craig, adding, “But it’s 15 years later, so it worked out!” 

After adopting a baby in real-life, Craig and Crano found themselves spending a lot of time together during COVID and wanted a shared creative outlet. “It started in the living room. We had just had our son. It was the beginning of the pandemic. We had an infant sleeping on us, and we were like, ‘What if we started writing this movie together?’” Crano says.

Projecting their Final Draft document onto their TV screen, writing together began as a fun way to fill the time. Crano describes a moment when he wrote a character inspired by Craig. As he typed COLE, 35, but admits to 32, Craig ruffled, saying, “You can’t say that!” Finally conceding that the description was both hilarious and authentic, Craig agreed to keep it in the script. As they got to the heart of each other’s insecurities on the page, they both knew they were onto something. 

“We could make fun of each other through this process,” Crano says, “and that was entertaining enough to keep us sane.”

The film’s early scenes are pulled from their real lives, including the emotional rollercoaster of the adoption process. But rather than turn it into a straight drama, the couple decided to use genre as a vehicle to explore – and then bust open – the familiar tropes of LGBTQ+ stories.

“So many portrayals of adoption on screen paint the birth mother as a villain,” says Crano. “But that couldn’t have been further from our experience. We wanted to make the birth mother the hero of the film, and let the gay characters, for once, be the ones who go off the rails.”

Andrew Rannells and Nick Kroll in 'I Don't Understand You'

What begins as a heartfelt vacation to Europe steadily devolves into an unexpected murder satire, blurring the line between horror and comedy, hero and villain. One minute, you’re tearing up during a moving scene with their soon-to-be adopted baby’s birth mom (Amanda Seyfried), the next, you’re watching the protagonists clumsily hide yet another body.

Both Crano and Craig wanted to subvert viewer expectations. “The audience is so savvy now. They know three-act structure, they know how characters work because we just consume so much media. So our job as storytellers is to surprise them,” says Crano.

Surprise comes not only from the film’s tonal shifts but from the increasingly unhinged choices the characters make. “Our characters make terrible decisions,” says Craig. “But they never betray their intelligence. Even if they’re doing something absurd, it has to make sense for them in the moment.”

Most of the humor comes from character, like when sausage made from the oldest horse in the village is served to Cole (Rannells), a vegetarian who doesn’t want to disappoint his elderly Italian hostess. It’s one of the funniest scenes in the film.  But both writers admit it took some experimenting for them to figure out the comedic lines not to cross in the early drafts of the script. 

“For anybody reading this, don’t kill dogs or any domestic animals in your script, because the first note you will get from anybody is, you’ve got to take that out or that won’t get made,” says Craig, who says they changed the dogs in the script to two adorable pygmy goats.

Despite all the blood and injuries, I Don’t Understand You is a character-driven film. “We were writing a character piece inside a horror movie,” says Craig. “Because of who the characters were, it ended up being a comedy. We trusted the characters to lead us through the story, not the genre.”

That trust went all the way to the film’s ending, where audience members may find themselves rooting for these unlikely antiheroes – or maybe not. “We’ve had people tell us, ‘I don’t feel good about myself that I want these guys to get the baby, but I do,’” says Crano. “And we’re like, ‘Yeah. That’s the feeling we had writing it.’”

But the film’s moral uncertainty is part of its selling point. “The worst thing,” Craig says, quoting friend and producer on the film Joel Edgerton, “is if the audience walks out silent. We wanted people to walk out talking. Arguing. Feeling uncomfortable, conflicted, moved. That’s when you know you’ve done your job.”

Andrew Rannells in 'I Don't Understand You'

For writers looking to follow in their footsteps – or stray from them entirely – Crano and Craig offer this advice for crafting genre-bending, expectation-defying stories: Don’t write dumb characters. 

“Nothing kills a script faster than characters who act against their intelligence just to serve the plot,” Crano says. “You know, like someone with a gun and flashlight choosing only the flashlight to go into the woods. Always write to the top of their intelligence, even if they’re making bad decisions, let them be believable.”

They also encourage writers to challenge genre conventions and make bold choices. “Ask yourself: what’s the worst thing that could happen right now – not just to the character, but to the movie?” says Craig. “That’s where you find surprise. That’s where you find your voice.”

They also urge writers to put their trust into their characters more than the genre. “If you write a horror movie, you’ll get a horror movie,” Crano says. “But if you write a compelling character piece that happens to take place in a horror setting, you’ll end up with something far more original. Let the characters guide the story, not the formula.”

I Don’t Understand You is now available on streaming on all major platforms.