When her best friend vanishes after watching a mysterious VHS, a teenage girl must navigate a nightmarish world of twisted nostalgia to bring her back.
In the small town of Kennedy, two inseparable best friends, Hannah and Julie, spend their final summer nights together wandering the aisles of Video Barn, the town’s fading VHS rental store. Bonded by their love of cult horror films, the girls find comfort in the nostalgic glow of the flickering tapes—until one night, a mysterious cassette labeled “Just press play!” changes everything. When Julie vanishes after watching it, Hannah’s search leads her into a chilling reality where her best friend is trapped inside the TV, imprisoned in a warped world of retro nightmares.
Directed by Film Shortage alum Bianca Poletti—whose work has been featured on the platform over a dozen times (Radically Honest, I am whole)—Video Barn is a love letter to the eerie magic of 80s horror. Blending surreal scares, bittersweet friendship, and an undercurrent of dreamlike dread, the film taps into the strange allure of analog media and the dark secrets it can hold. In this haunting mix of nostalgia and terror, the real question is whether Hannah can free Julie… or if she’s destined to join her behind the screen.
Video Barn taps into a rich nostalgia for VHS culture and 80s horror. What inspired the setting and tone of the film?
Thank you! I was deeply inspired by Gregory Crewdson’s photography and the dark yet whimsical worlds he creates, as well as the eerie, timeless feel of The Twilight Zone and the nostalgic small-town atmosphere found in Stephen King’s stories. I wanted to merge the old with the new—capturing the ghost of dead media like VHS and imagining how it might still cling to existence in the modern day.
How did you balance genre elements like horror and suspense with the emotional core of Hannah and Julie’s friendship?
At its core, Video Barn is about friendship and the weight of the choices we make in a single moment. From the very beginning, I knew Hannah and Jules’ bond had to be at the heart of the film. For me, the horror stories that stay with you are the ones grounded in emotion. What’s truly terrifying isn’t just the monster in the dark—it’s losing someone you love, or realizing you’re completely alone when you hear a noise coming from the shadows.
The film feels like a love letter to cult horror. Were there specific films or directors that influenced your approach?
It definitely is! There are so many influences, but Poltergeist is a big one—it’s terrifying yet darkly whimsical, all while staying grounded. I’ve always loved the idea of a portal to another universe hidden in something as ordinary as the objects in our homes. The Twilight Zone, Ghost World, Videodrome, and Stranger Things also shaped Video Barn in major ways, each bringing their own blend of mystery, mood, and the uncanny.
The look and feel of the film really evoke a different era. How did you approach the visual aesthetic—lighting, color palette, and texture?
I was really inspired by the grit of ’80s horror and wanted to channel that texture into Video Barn’s world. We leaned into it with colored carpet, pops of neon, and a Twin Peaks-inspired forest backdrop behind Hannah and Jules in the opening shot as they watch The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Twin Peaks was a huge touchstone for our set design. For lighting, I often look to paintings for inspiration, and Corey and I took that approach here—combining painterly light with cinematic references from Wim Wenders’ The American Friend, one of my all-time favorites. Robby Müller’s lighting in that film is absolutely stunning, and a big influence on our palette and mood.
What kind of camera and format did you shoot on, and did you use any analog elements or post-production tricks to emulate VHS quality?
We shot on an ARRI Alexa 35 paired with my DP Corey’s custom vintage Cooke lenses, which gave the image a soft, organic quality right out of the gate. For the memory sequences—those fleeting, almost ghostly flashes Hannah has of Jules after she goes missing—we switched to Corey’s personal VHS camcorder. That analog format gave us a natural distortion, texture, and color bleed. The bulk of the film was captured digitally, but our colorist, Mikey Rossiter, gave it a lush, filmic grade that bridged the two worlds—polished yet imperfect, like a half-forgotten dream recorded on tape.
Was Video Barn filmed in a real video store? How did you approach set design to create an authentic and immersive space?
It wasn’t—though I wish it had been. I searched all over L.A. for a functioning VHS store with that Twin Peaks-style small-town charm, but nothing quite fit. Eventually, we stumbled on a beautiful, slightly run-down record store in Pasadena, built in the ’60s, that had all the bones of what I imagined. My incredible production designer, Andrea Leigh, transformed it into the VHS store of my dreams—building everything from scratch. We also used the same space for the 1950s TV world scenes, and even shot the news segment in the parking lot out back. With only two days to shoot, we had to make one location carry the weight of the entire film, and this place gave us the perfect foundation.
There’s a surreal quality to the horror in the film—almost dreamlike. How did you want the audience to feel while watching?
I wanted the audience to feel like they’d been pulled into another time and place—somewhere familiar yet slightly off-kilter. The surreal moments in the film became a way to slip between reality and something stranger, like drifting through a half-remembered dream. I was also interested in the unsettling sensation of being manipulated by an unseen force—in this case, a kind of TV entity—where you’re never sure if you’re watching it, or if it’s watching you.
Do you see Video Barn as a stand-alone story or the start of a larger concept—possibly even a feature or anthology?
Yes! I’m currently developing Video Barn into a feature, envisioned as three interconnected chapters. Each will expand the world, deepen the mythology, and explore new perspectives on the story’s central mystery. I’m really excited to see how far we can push its strange, eerie universe.
