Video Barn
2025 · 12m · USA
Directed by Bianca Poletti
Tones: dark, humorous, surreal
When Julie discovers a mysterious VHS tape at her small-town video store and vanishes, her best friend Hannah must watch the tape to enter the nightmarish loop and pull her back out.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Poletti understands that analog horror's real power is tactile — the VHS tape as object, the video store as dying ritual space — maximum effect in twelve ruthlessly efficient minutes.
Cursed-VHS horror minus the gore — fine, but Censor and Videodrome already mined this seam better. Poletti's restraint is interesting in theory; in practice it sounds like a 13-minute mood piece.
Bianca Poletti eschews blood and gore for stillness and silence in a cursed-VHS premise — SXSW Horror selection with Grace Van Dien, and the Videodrome / Censor analog-tape lineage carried by absence rather than effect.
Reviews
The throwback setting of Video Barn is beautifully rendered through visual composition and crisp cinematography.
Festivals
- SXSW 2025