Videodrome
“After all, there is nothing real outside our perception of reality, is there?”
this wasn’t my first Cronenberg — I saw Dead Ringers and left equal parts disturbed and weirdly intrigued — but Videodrome is the one that really clicked for me. i’m relatively new to body horror, and I’ve never been drawn to gore for gore’s sake. but here, every grotesque image feels intentional. and that’s what makes it so incredible.
released in 1983, Videodrome predicted the future with unnerving clarity. long before the internet, Cronenberg understood that media wouldn’t just shape our culture — it would rewire our brains, mutate our desires, and collapse the boundary between self and screen. the film doesn’t just show how media affects us. it shows how we let it, how we want it to.
the protagonist talks like he’s chasing profit, but what he’s really chasing is something deeper and far more disturbing. the violence he consumes isn’t just marketable—it’s personal. Cronenberg is probing the human urge toward spectacle and pain, and the way we use media as both a mirror and an excuse. it’s horror as self-exposure.
the hallucinations and reality-blurring aren’t just your run-of-the-mill narrative devices. they’re the point. you’re not meant to decode Videodrome — you’re meant to absorb it, be changed by it. the signal doesn’t force itself on the body. the body opens itself to the signal (literally).
and despite how bleak all that sounds, it’s also slyly funny — resigned in the way only a Canadian dystopian film can be. horror with ideas, gore with intent, and a vision of the media age that landed about 40 years early.
long live the new flesh. I guess.