There are few directors who make movies as deeply unsettling as David Cronenberg. If you’re looking to feel disoriented, disturbed, and disgusted please check out this 1983 horror film.

The movie begins with Max Renn, played by James Woods. He’s the president of a local TV station that specializes in sensationalistic and prurient programming. He’s on the hunt for the next big thrill that he can broadcast to the public. He discovers a TV signal broadcasting a show called Videodrome. It features people being tortured and murdered. He believes it’s staged and tries to find the program so he can play it on his station believing that the more violent and sexual the material the bigger the hit. He gets more than he bargained for as he begins having vivid hallucinations inspired by Videodrome.

The film is commenting on the world of 1983 specifically how television is influencing people’s minds and activities. There are a lot of scenes about how too much TV can warp perception and the image becomes reality for people who are glued to their TV sets. It’s a fascinating times capsule of the fears of the day, but an even more fascinating commentary on our modern era. Replace the word television with screen time and the arguments presented in the movie about TV map pretty perfectly onto fears we have today of social media.

One of the major concerns of the film is the way media warps our sense of reality. If you spend all day watching violent TV doesn’t that change your relationship to violence? If you spend all day on social media don’t you lose track of how normal human interactions take place? I don’t know what the world was like in 1983, but the parallels between now and then are surprisingly prescient in this movie.

The movie is not only deep, it’s deeply disturbing. Cronenberg loves to make human bodies do things that they definitely should not be doing. Max Renn’s torso grows a weird gaping maw. He puts his hand into this vertical slit in his stomach and barely is able to pull his hand free from the sucking opening. It’s an incredible special effect. Knowing it was done practically there are several moments that left me scratching my head wondering how exactly they did it. It’s also just nasty and gross to look at. It’s also truly disorienting when it disappears, and we are left wondering if that was a hallucination or if he’s physically changing.

The ways in which the film weaves in and out of hallucinations is truly unsettling. Some things happen that make me think everything we’re seeing isn’t real. Then other things happen that make me question whether it’s all real. After watching it I felt like I had woken up from a nightmare. A truly disturbing dream that I was grateful to have left behind.

The body horror, the twisted psychological horror, and the techno horror come together perfectly in this movie. It really worked and got under skin. Do not seek this out if a disturbing and disorienting experience isn’t your thing, but if you love the 80’s, body horror, and great practical effects check this one out.

It is my cup of tea. A