Directed by Argentinian filmmaker Bianca Poletti, the surrealist short Video Barn captures in just over ten minutes a haunting and twisted form of nostalgia where past and present collide. Starring Grace Van Dien and Reina Hardesty as best friends Julie and Hannah, employees at a local video store within the small town of Kennedy, the film takes a sinister turn when Julie discovers a VHS tape marked “Just press play!”. This discovery sets in motion a hypnotic chain of events that are at once harrowing and thought-provoking.

Poletti’s affinity for the dreamlike and surreal is evident from the outset, with opening frames featuring a slow pan through a VHS store bathed in neon light and vintage saturation – an ode to retro-80s cinematography. Grainy screams and the whine of a chainsaw blaring from a horror film the two friends are watching blends unsettlingly with the twinkling lull of Morgan Kibby’s score. This opening tension sets the stage for an interesting experiment in surrealist horror.

A masterclass in sharp and disorientating jump-cuts, Poletti crafts mounting pressure through rapid shifts between splintering glass, deep-water plunges and a flurry of high-pitched whispers and whistles. Although the film stands alone as a viscerally unsettling journey through a distorted world of surrealist horror, it also manages to deliver a politically charged commentary in its brief runtime.

Video Barn offers a critique of the prevailing male gaze in contemporary media and how the tapes of patriarchal pasts persist in the present-day. The narrative of modern women becoming trapped in a nightmare time-warp of patriarchal domesticity has long-held a strong influence in Hollywood, a legacy well-established by film adaptations of Ira Levin’s The Stepford Wives. Whilst Poletti’s short recycles well-established tropes, her use of VHS to represent entrapment offers something unique. The VHS tape ensnares Julie and Hannah into surrealist trappings that mirror the 50s and 60s – decades defined by rigid female archetypes – yet the ‘Just press play!’ button is found in the present-day. Perhaps Poletti’s broader message here is that these tapes of history’s oppressive pasts are far from buried – the press play button continues to be pushed across the world today.

The brief but impactful moment in which a man enters the video store, played by Andrew Bering, deepens the film’s commentary. Following a pointed shot of a table of films beside a prominent sign reading ‘The Female Gaze’, Bering’s character asks a disillusioned Hannah for the adult film section. By leaving with both a pornographic film and the VHS tape, Poletti offers a critique of the male gaze and its enduring commodification of women’s bodies, past and present. For Poletti to have sown the seeds for this interpretation in such a brief runtime is an impressive feat.

Video Barn is a bold horror piece that is as intellectually provocative as it is viscerally unsettling. The film makes its world premiere at SXSW 2025 in the Midnight Short Program — screening on March 9 at 9:45pm at Rollins Theatre at The Long Center and on March 13 at 10:15pm at Alamo Lamar 9. Find more information here.

Rachel Sinclair