Review of Videodrome (1983) by Doug F — 27 Jan 2010

We've seen the too-much-television satire before, but this one presents it with a different spin. Some of the ideas are so simple that they're good, and some of the visuals are hard to shake. About five minutes in, I recognized the director -- even though I've seen only one of his movies, ever, before this one (I said to myself, "This has to be by the guy who did the movie about the typewriters that eat each other.").

Cronenberg gets compared to David Lynch a lot. In terms of storytelling, I think that's pretty accurate. But Cronenberg is a little messier. He's simpler, grittier, more videotapey. Lynch composes shots more masterfully. And the thing about Cronenberg, which I think both makes and breaks him, is that he obsesses over the same two images throughout the course of the movie, at least in the case of the two movies I've seen. The effects are wonderfully done, but they never vary. "Naked Lunch" offers giant bugs and weird typewriter creatures. "Videodrome" offers James Woods' vagina-stomach and breathing videotapes and television sets. On one hand, this repetition gives the movie a personality, but on the other it makes that personality one-dimensional. It means that the visuals outweigh the story, which in the cases of "Videodrome" and "Naked Lunch," they definitely do. That's where the makes-it-but-breaks-it part comes in. Cronenberg's movies are unique and make excellent use of a moving visual medium, but they don't have the heartbeat that all the best films have.