By David Dent
Kibby (Andrea Figliomeni) works at Video Vision, a shop which deals in digitizing ‘dead format’ tapes, owned by a guy called Rodney (Shelley Valfer) who used to run a video store back in the day but was forced to diversify.
Into the shop comes Gator (Chrystal Peterson), a trans man looking to get footage of their dad’s band transferred from ancient tape; said group specialise in combining music with the smashing up of computers. Gator and Kibby form an instant bond, at the same time as the shop takes delivery of a smelly old VCR who used to belong to a cult figure called Dr. Analog.
While the pair’s relationship deepens, with Kibby learning from Gator, in faltering steps, about being in a partnership with a trans person, the VCR begins to exert its influence on the store assistant; the dead format is very much alive and seeking to inhabit Kibby’s body.
Director Michael Turney is no stranger to controversy; his 2015 movie ‘Normal’ dealt with disconnection in New York and his production company Less Tech More Life advertises his concerns that technology is limiting people’s ability to interconnect, ahem, IRL. So it’s perhaps fitting that Gator and Kibby meet in the background of the detritus of technology; as Rodney, and many others like him fetishise the past (the movie feels like it’s in thrall to the 1980s but it runs much deeper than that), Kibby confronts her own ‘dead format’ attitudes in forging her new relationship.
The turn into increasingly abstract ‘Videodrome’ style body horror is perhaps not subtle, but in a film which ranges from slacker comedy to awkward ‘will they won’t they’ relationship drama, Turney has no qualms about chucking it all in. It’s a bit messy but ‘Video Vision’ is a film I was left thinking about long after the credits rolled.
Video Vision screened as part of Frightfest 2024.
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