Videodrome

David Cronenberg’s Videodrome follows Max Renn, the sleazy president of a small television station who stumbles across a mysterious pirate broadcast featuring nothing but torture and murder. Hoping to exploit it as sensational programming, he becomes obsessed with tracking down its source, only to find himself slipping into a world where television, hallucination, conspiracy and reality become impossible to separate. The deeper he goes, the more his own body and mind begin to transform in shocking and disturbing ways.

Part media satire, part body horror nightmare and part philosophical puzzle, Videodrome remains one of Cronenberg’s most influential films. Its unforgettable practical effects, surreal imagery and eerie predictions about technology’s influence on human consciousness feel even more relevant today than they did in 1983. Strange, unsettling and endlessly discussed, it’s a cult classic that leaves viewers questioning whether they’ve just watched a movie or tuned into a signal they were never meant to receive.