Portland-Made Horror Movie “Hiding Henry” Could Be an Agonizing Cult Classic in the Making

Shot on VHS tape, “Hiding Henry” will get a cassette release through physical media company Lunchmeat.

Hiding Henry film (Courtesy of the Portland Horror Film Festival)
By Andrew Jankowski

Ahead of its physical media release this spring through media company Lunchmeat, the locally made 2024 high-concept horror film Hiding Henry screened at the Hollywood Theatre on Saturday, Feb. 1, for the movie house’s bimonthly series Queer Horror. Filmed on VHS tape, Hiding Henry straddles the line between an amazing art school project and an unapologetically abrasive, anti-commercial experiment in endurance viewing. The plot, sussed out between aesthetic double-exposure takes, follows Sarah (Shannon Neale) and her dog as they move into a fixer-upper haunted by a creepy urban legend.

Henry (Christof Whiteman) was the neighborhood’s best hide-and-seek player who was so good at hiding that nobody could find him for 30 years, including his family. Unbeknownst to anyone, Henry was hiding within his home’s walls, killing anyone who came close to discovering him. There’s actually a pretty decent plot twist hidden within this movie, delivered by Sarah’s friend Izzy (Anthony Hudson). Unfortunately, somewhat like actual hide-and-seek, Hiding Henry is exhausting to the point that several viewers in the audience quit and went home before the climactic payoff.

Opportunities to see Hudson—the mind behind Queer Horror and its host, art clown Carla Rossi—out of drag are rare, and their delivery of Hiding Henry’s intentionally absurd dialogue fits what the rest of the rest delivers (the authoritative “my cousin has insurance” is immediately quotable). There are just so many double exposures overlaid with the ramblings of a madman. The problem is, a lot of them are genuinely interesting, especially ones that play with the VHS medium’s propensity to glitch, so it would be hard to know what to cut.

Hiding Henry is nothing if not divisive. Sure, a dozen or so of the 100-plus attendees walked out, and the post-screening air hung thick with stupified awe, but more than enough viewers howled with laughter at the movie’s absurdist dialogue to prove that director Sean Whiteman might have made an agonizing cult classic perfect for those who still have VCRs.

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