A chilling portrait of a morally bankrupt adolescent, obsedssed by video and by images of violence, Benny’s Video introduces us to the world of it’s protagonist, Benny, who incarcerates himself in his airless, curtained room and see the world through video images. One day, while his parents are away, he take home a young girl he has met outside the video rental store and brutally murders her. When his dutiful but distant parents discover the terrible incident, they too are drawn into his world of the amoral video screen where they see reflected the emotional emptiness and confusion of their lives.
Haneke’s film confronts the knot of violence, voyeurism and ethics as directly as Henry – Portrait of a Serial Killer, or Man Bites Dog; albeit without the explicit violence. And with Angela Winker, Ulrich Muhe and young Arno Frisch turning in excellent performances as the troubled family, it’s as emotionally as it is intellectually disquieting.