NIGHT VISION

Directed by Michael Krueger. United States. 1987.

I challenge you to finish NIGHT VISION in a single sitting. It may be impossible, like not yawning when in a room full of yawners, or sneezing with your eyes open, or finding the TV show Friends funny. I thought this would be a thematically appropriate film for yours truly to watch, as I recently sat through both TERRORVISION, a movie about an evil cable channel, and THE VIDEO DEAD, which is all about an evil TV. NIGHT VISION is about an evil VCR… well, for maybe 5% of its running time anyway.

The other 95% is about depression, culture shock, writer’s block, cans of baked beans, economic anxiety, urban crime, imposter syndrome, boring sex, and the impact of persistent ennui on the minds of childlike 20-somethings played by actors in their 30s. Typical horror movie fare, right?

But whatever. Evil VCR, kids! Cable, TV, and VCR. Yes sir, that’s the 1980s trifecta. Cowabunga!

A small-town Kansas hick named Andy arrives in the big city of wherever the fuck this movie is set. He immediately gets tossed out of a swanky apartment building and into the dirty streets where the best he can get is a $60-a-month room in a seedy dump full of flamboyant gay men, prostitutes, and various other obnoxious 80s genre movie stereotypes. But hey, every room comes with a free lead pipe under the bed, just in case things get dicey. What a deal!

Andy is a writer without a story. That’s why he’s here in the big city (which I think is supposed to be New York City but is actually Denver). He believes that writers need to experience life. It says a lot about Andy that he then spends most of the movie inside his apartment, watching VHS tapes instead of, you know, experiencing life in the big city.

And I mean, who can blame him? The big city of NIGHT VISION is endless noise, fighting, gunshots, crime, and screams. Frazzled and annoyed by the infinite cacophony robbing him of sleep and concentration, he makes his way to a video rental store owned by a man named Ed, where he meets Jill, a sarcastic, gum-chewing, cigarette-smoking clerk who seems to hate existence. In fact, the only thing she doesn’t seem to hate is Andy, and for the life of me, I cannot figure out why. He has all the appeal of a used tampon covered in cat shit.

I forgot to mention that the very first scene of this film is a Satanic ritual, edited at a million miles a second, all camcorders, candles, chanting, and cultists. That matters because we eventually meet Vinnie, a very short mustachioed man, as he’s yanked into an alleyway by two normal-sized Satanists. They would really like their VCR back as it contains the opening scene of the movie. Andy uncharacteristically comes to Vinnie’s aid, and the two run off, steal a case of beer, and relax at Vinnie’s place. To thank Andy for helping him out, Vinnie gives him, you guessed it, the evil VCR, ill-gotten gains from the minor criminal work Vinnie carries out after dark.

Once Andy starts watching the ritual tape, strange things begin to happen. His dreams become much more vivid. Unfortunately, they never become interesting, mostly just saccharine wish fulfillment fluff about him and Jill. When he wakes up, he gets down to writing, drinking beer, and eating pork and beans. After a particularly rough night of lousy sleep, Vinnie pops by for a visit. He finds some cryptic prose that Andy doesn’t remember typing and a horror movie he doesn’t remember renting. Freaked out by the ever-escalating weird shit, Andy accuses Vinnie of somehow masterminding it all, even calling him a dirty thief. Offended by this terrible accusation, Vinnie steals Andy’s lead pipe and leaves.

Andy eventually apologizes to Vinnie, right before delivering his 8,000th line of self-pitying dialogue about his poor life choices. See, Andy is a wimp. He’s jumpy and whiny, always bitching and moaning about how he can’t think of a story that will engage his soul. He acts like a moody 16-year-old sad case, the kind of kid you wanted to douse in pig’s blood at the prom. I can’t stand him. In fact, I hate him. Actually, I loathe him. I resent the movie for making me spend time with him, and I begin to question the sanity of Jill, a woman who looks twice his age and is completely immune to his total lack of charm. She swoons when she looks at him, telling him he has the most beautiful eyes. Eyes that see everything. I want to cave his head in with the lead pipe, but I can’t because Vinnie stole it. I was on the verge of a boredom-induced crash out the likes of which TikTok has never seen.

So I turned off the movie, and I didn’t turn it back on for 48 hours. Imagine my total disgust when I saw that I still had 55 fucking minutes left.

The clock on the VCR reads 6:66. As Andy narrates the scene, Ed is attacked in the video store after being irresistibly drawn towards an eerie green glow. Andy snaps back to consciousness, but he’s not in bed sleeping. He’s in front of his typewriter, pounding out the scene of Ed’s murder. Andy eventually goes to check on Ed and finds the video store swarmed by cops. But relax, Ed is fine. Someone just broke in and trashed the store, a minor crime the cops in this movie take VERY seriously.

But OK, I tell myself. It’s starting to look a lot more like a horror movie. Maybe this will get interesting now that Andy’s dreams are beginning to spill into his waking life, but no, it fucking doesn’t. Sorry, we can’t do horror movie stuff here, folks. We have to spend 10 minutes watching Jill and Andy have the worst sex two people have ever had, all while Andy whines about his life. His writing hasn’t gotten any better either. No longer cranking out pages full of daytime soap opera fluff, his mind is now preoccupied with stories called Brain Creature, Pool of Death, and The Screaming Skulls. He drowns his sorrows in beer and baked beans. Andy tries to tell Vinnie that his stories are starting to come to life, but Vinnie doesn’t believe him. I don’t either. I’ve been watching this shit for DEAR GOD, 78 MINUTES and that hasn’t happened once.

It’s maddening. The movie keeps flirting with this WES CRAVEN’S NEW NIGHTMARE kind of meta-horror, but never leaps, dancing around the central concept of the entire film like it doesn’t exist. THERE IS A GODDAMN EVIL VCR IN ANDY’S LIVING ROOM THAT CONTAINS A TAPE OF A SATANIC RITUAL. That should be the focus of the movie, yet it barely figures in the narrative. It’s just whining, baked beans, and more whining.

Jill has a nightmare while sleeping at Andy’s. Andy starts writing a story about the Satanists on the tape. That’s about it for the rest of the film. There’s a final bit of revelatory ho-hum about the tape in the VCR containing a full-blown incantation, and that’s why all this shit is happening, but who cares?

The only intriguing scene in the entire movie is when Vinnie shows the cops the cursed videotape, and it shows, clear as day, Vinnie exiting the Satanist’s apartment carrying the TV and the VCR. So how the fuck did he get the videotape? Did he break back into the apartment, walk up to the expensive camcorder sitting on a tripod, open it up, and take the tape? Why didn’t Vinnie steal the whole camcorder? How’d the tape get into the VCR? I guess it shouldn’t surprise me that this makes no sense. The whole film doesn’t make sense. My decision to watch the film made no sense. The fact that I came back to finish it makes no sense. Why I’m still writing this review makes no sense. The fact that you’re still reading it makes no sense.

We should both just stop now. We’ve had enough. We deserve better.