Atom Egoyan’s Family Viewing (1987) is a film that takes the word “uncomfortable” and stretches it over 80 minutes of dreary Canadian awkwardness, broken communication, and truly horrifying camcorder choices. It’s like if American Beauty were directed by a Soviet documentarian on Ambien, using only expired film stock and half-charged batteries. Critics might call it “bold” and “elliptical.” But you could also call it a slow-motion nervous breakdown taped over your childhood birthday party.
The film follows a broody teen named Van (Aidan Tierney), who spends his days moping around suburban Toronto and his nights uncovering the disturbing personal video archives of his deeply unsettling father, Stan (David Hemblen). Stan, you see, has a hobby: he records himself having sex with his girlfriend on top of old home movies of Van’s now-institutionalized mother. Yeah. You read that right. The man taped over precious family memories with his own sweaty softcore. Father of the year material, this one.
It’s meant to be a chilling metaphor about erasure, control, and family dysfunction—but it mostly plays like a public service announcement warning you about the dangers of leaving your camcorder unattended near sociopaths. The act itself is grotesque, yes, but Egoyan treats it with the same detached coolness he applies to everything else in this film. It’s not shocking. It’s not even horrifying. It’s just… weirdly boring. Like, existentially boring.
The cinematography doesn’t help. Shot in a palette of lifeless grays and soul-sucking taupes, Family Viewing looks like someone smeared dust on the lens and called it a style. Everything feels washed-out and muted, as if the film stock itself is depressed. Even the lighting is confused—interiors are bathed in that cold, fluorescent hum that screams “Canada, midwinter, early closing time.” The film’s entire aesthetic seems dedicated to making sure you never feel joy, interest, or blood circulation.
As for the pacing—it’s glacial. Egoyan isn’t in a rush to get anywhere because nowhere is exactly where he’s going. Characters drift from one emotionally stunted scene to another, trading cryptic dialogue like they’re practicing for an avant-garde hostage negotiation. Van speaks in a dull monotone, like a young David Cronenberg doing slam poetry in a dental office. His facial expressions range from “mildly constipated” to “quietly seething while writing Morrissey lyrics in his head.”
Stan, meanwhile, is a monster dressed in a Canadian Tire wardrobe. Hemblen plays him with a quiet menace that’s effective in theory but exhausting in practice. He’s the kind of guy who leers, drinks, films his sex life compulsively, and refers to empathy as “an expensive habit.” He’s both repulsive and unremarkable, like an overripe accountant who watches Eyes Wide Shut and thinks it’s a documentary.
Then there’s the girlfriend, Sandra (Gabrielle Rose), who works as a phone sex operator—because of course she does. Her presence is meant to add complexity, but instead she just floats around delivering exposition and acting uncomfortable, which, to be fair, is the default tone of every scene in this film. Even her tenderness feels filtered through a layer of VHS static and emotional detachment.
The plot, such as it is, revolves around Van trying to rescue his mother from the nursing home she’s been stashed in and maybe also confronting the emotional holocaust of his home life, but really it’s just a series of mopey errands and passive-aggressive hallway chats. There are occasional moments of insight, but they’re buried under so much awkward silence and dead-eyed blocking that they land with all the force of a beige pillow being dropped in a vacant room.
The recurring motif of video—surveillance, control, voyeurism—is supposed to elevate the film into a meta-commentary on the nature of memory and image. But honestly, it just makes you want to unplug every electronic device in your house. The constant cuts to blurry VHS footage are less artistic and more migraine-inducing. Every time the screen shifts to another grainy home video moment, you can almost hear your brain cells whisper, “Please, no more.”
Even Egoyan’s attempts at emotional catharsis are so muted they feel like accidental footnotes. When Van finally confronts his father, there’s no fiery climax, no dramatic explosion—just more resigned silence and vaguely threatening camera angles. The film ends, as it began, in a state of unresolved tension, as if Egoyan ran out of film and just nodded solemnly in lieu of writing an ending.
The soundtrack? Nonexistent. Or worse: so minimal you start thinking your speakers are broken. The absence of music isn’t artistic here—it’s punitive. It’s as if the film is daring you to feel anything without assistance. Newsflash: we don’t.
To be fair, Family Viewing isn’t a total disaster. There are moments—brief, flickering moments—where Egoyan’s icy precision hits the mark. A quiet glance here. A slow pan there. The occasional line that cuts through the fog. But they’re buried so deep in the film’s obsession with muted suffering and drab voyeurism that they don’t leave a lasting impression. They’re like interesting footnotes in a book you gave up reading after chapter two.
Ultimately, Family Viewing is less about family, less about viewing, and more about how much detachment one can project onto a screen without turning the audience into a room full of emotionally paralyzed furniture. It’s a film that wants to explore trauma and identity through a stylistic lens of cold observation. Unfortunately, that lens is cracked, covered in dust, and pointed directly at a wall.
Rating: 1.5 out of 5 ruined home movies.
Watch it if you want to feel what it’s like to be emotionally exiled inside a Canadian VHS tape circa 1987. Everyone else: rewind, eject, and run far, far away.