Benny's Video

1992 horror movie

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Parents of a screen-obsessed teenager who needs some fresh air get upset after he gets a new haircut.

Knowing Haneke's other work and the basic plot of this one, I was pretty sure it wouldn't be an easy watch. And it's not. There were definitely times that I'd rather have been watching The Toxic Avenger or whatever the teenager in this was watching than the subtly disturbing violence in this one. It starts with a shot of a pig getting a bolt pistol to the head, and then Haneke decides to show us that again in slow motion because it's the exact kind of imagery he wants to force us to watch. Visually, it wasn't anything too bad, but there's this repetitive dog barking that sounded horrifying in slow-mo. The act of violence at the center of Benny's Video is both disturbing and shocking, and the aftermath is just as disturbing and shocking. And I'm not just talking about that haircut.

Most disturbing is a teenage girl's observation that "It's snowing" while watching a video. I don't want to explain why to anybody who hasn't seen the movie though.

There are two overhead shots of McDonalds food on a tray. I'm not sure what Haneke is getting at. All of the other visuals in this seem so deliberate that this pair of shots seen so far apart in the movie have to mean something. Or who knows? Maybe it's just product placement and Haneke was able to fund the project with those shots.

I was impressed with the kid who played Benny--Arno Frisch--as well as the guy who played his dad, but the performance that really blew me away was Angela Winkler as his mother. Both parents are so good in a scene where they are watching the titular video, but Winkler really delivers something special in a couple other key scenes, one where she's crying and one where she lets out an inappropriate chortle.