Benny’s Video 1992

Benny is a teenage boy whose fascination with cameras and film recordings borders on obsession. Raised by emotionally distant parents, Georg and Anna, he is surrounded by televisions, cassette players, and recording devices that seem to encourage his hobby, even as they remain largely unaware of his growing captivation with filmed violence. Benny repeatedly revisits a home video he shot on a European farm, a disturbing scene that captures the slaughter of a pig with a captive bolt pistol.

A party centered on a game called Pilot and Passengers erupts in the family home and is abruptly shut down by the parents when they return. The party is hosted by Eva(/actor/stephanie-brehme) and reveals, through Benny’s questioning, that Eva took advantage of her parents’ planned absence to hold the gathering. The family’s evening routines resume, but the tension between Benny’s inward world and his parents’ outward calm remains.

When Georg and Anna depart for another weekend, Benny takes a bold step. He invites a girl he has seen near the local video store to come to his house. After they watch the pig-slaughter video, he reveals a slaughtering gun and murders the girl, a killing that is recorded and replayed on a video monitor. The act is chilling in its casual certainty, and Benny’s calm attitude underscores a troubling detachment from the gravity of his action.

Following the murder, Benny spends time with friends at a dance club and even spends a night at a friend’s house. On the way home, he gets his head shaved, a small but telling outward sign of a break from the ordinary. Back home, his father confronts him about the haircut, highlighting the growing strain within the family. As the news plays in Benny’s room, he switches the view to the murder video, turning the camera on his own crime as if documenting a disturbing hobby rather than a reckoning.

Georg removes the videotape, and a difficult conversation unfolds in the living room about what to do next. The parents decide to dismember the body, navigating a grim path that will redefine their sense of family and safety. Anna takes Benny away on a vacation to Egypt, and he appears oddly untroubled by the murder he committed. The trip ends with the family returning home after six days, and Georg cleans the apartment to remove any traces.

Back at home, when Georg asks Benny why he killed the girl, Benny offers a nonchalant reply that leaves the question unanswered. The story continues in Benny’s video diary, where a party hosted by Eva reappears—this time with Georg and Anna’s permission—revealing the same game dynamic and their daughter’s supposed success at it. In reality, Anna and Georg watch the video with Benny and discuss how well their daughter plays the game, adding a layer of complicity to the portrait of a family unable to confront what has happened.

The film culminates in a harrowing sequence: Benny is interviewed by the police, answering with a single, muted word, “Because.” The moment signals not closure but a chilling indifference that pervades the room. After the interview, Benny encounters his parents in the hall; in a quiet, loaded moment, he whispers a single word—Entschuldigung—and the screen cuts to Benny’s parents being escorted by police officers, a stark image of a family fractured by violence and the secrets they keep.

Entschuldigung

Why did you come to us now?

In this stark, unflinching narrative, the film surveys how media, detachment, and a quiet suburban life can conceal a dangerous undercurrent. The use of video as both window and weapon runs throughout, turning footage into an archive of deeds that never quite recede from memory, even as those involved struggle to acknowledge what they have become. The tension of the story rests on a careful balance between the intimate details of a family’s private life and the public, dispassionate gaze of the recordings that capture it all.