Video Vision wears its cinematic inspirations on its sleeve, playing with fleshy video tapes and rupturing bodies much like Cronenberg’s Videodrome (1983). However, a fumbled commentary on trans identity paired with long stretches of cringy dialogue makes Video Vision a deflating watch despite its good intentions.
★★☆☆☆
Video Vision follows Kibby (Andrea Figliomeni), an assistant at a VHS repair store. One day she finds a VHS and takes it home, only to begin being tormented by the mad Dr. Analog (Hunter Kahl), who possesses the tape. Kibby’s distress begins to hinder her new relationship with Gator (Chrystal Peterson), a young trans person. Struggling to cope with her new queer relationship and the terrors of the tape, Kibby’s life begins to unspool into a chaotic mess of frights and film.
Any horror film playing with video tapes owes a debt to Margaret Thatcher. In ‘80s Britain, then Prime Minister Thatcher and Christian activist Mary Whitehouse were blaming the corruption of Britain’s youth on sleazy VHS tapes, leading to the list of “video nasties”: a compendium of the most depraved video tapes around. By banning 39 films under the prosecutable “Section 1”, The Iron Lady forever changed the perception of VHS tapes in the cinematic consciousness. From then, those black boxes were equated with sleazy secrets and abhorrent horrors, as exemplified in the titular sadistic torture porn programme in Videodrome. Prano Bailey-Bond’s Censor (2021) also capitalised on Thatcher’s moral panic, following a film censor’s descent into madness exacerbated by ‘80s video nasties.
By evoking video tapes, Video Vision positions itself as part of that cinematic lineage—intentionally or not. The fleshy video tape which pulsates in Kibby’s workplace is a wink to a similar practical effect in Videodrome, while the gory kills, which are too few and far between, open the valve on a hose of blood in a video nasty manner.
Sadly, most of the film is considerably dryer, dominated by long, ambling conversations between Kibby and Gator. These chats are achingly long, usually consisting of Kibby struggling to understand Gator’s trans identity. It appears as if her ignorance is supposed to be a charming trait, but it comes across as irritating and sometimes hostile. The film’s whole approach to queerness is discomfortingly messy; when sex reassignment surgery is equated with the shift from VHS to DVD it’s hard not to audibly groan in embarrassment.
The flirty dialogue between Kibby and Gator also doesn’t work, due to its high density of stoner-esque hypothesising and nonsensical jokes. The whole experience is like third-wheeling a couple you hardly know, subjected to inside jokes which you wonder are actually jokes at all. Figliomeni and Peterson do the best they can with the script, but Kibby’s jarring ignorance and clunky emotional shifts from flirty to frustrated sabotage both actors’ performances.
By the time it arrives at the baffling evil Doctor plot, Video Vision has squandered any potential offered by its VHS-based premise. It is by no means a terrible film. It is technically well made and director Michael Turney’s adoration of Cronenberg and ‘80s horror cinema will be appreciated by fans of the genre. In those brief moments of gore, you can see diamonds of good intent shimmering amongst the pools of blood. However, overambition wipes any sense of fun from the film, like a magnet to a VHS. With the legacy of the VHS tape automatically boosting the uncanny levels in any horror film, it’s disappointing to see Video Vision fail to utilise the object’s rich history. The film ends up being what the video nasties would have been without Thatcher: forgettable.
The Verdict
The video nasty premise won’t live up to any horror fans expectations. Whilst the ambition is acknowledged, Video Vision would have been better leaning spraying more blood than spewing dull dialogue at the viewer. There may be some fun nods to Cronenberg for horror fans, but Video Vision is definitely tedious.
Words by Barney Nuttall
Video Vision premieres at FrightFest on 24th August.
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