The use of found footage has always been relatively uncommon in Indian as well as Kannada cinema, with 6-5=2 being the obvious reference. What makes Srinidhi Bengaluru’s Video interesting is not that it is the first to employ the format, but that the form feels closely tied to the lives of its characters.
The five YouTubers, known as the Tarle Gang, set out on a road trip to Odisha in search of the fictional Diniwa tribe. They have just crossed the one-million-subscriber mark and want to celebrate it with a video their audience will watch. So, from the beginning, they are driven by views, subscribers and content. The cameras are not an excuse for the film’s format; they are part of characters' everyday lives.
Cast: Bharath K Tumkur, Jeevan Shivakumar,Tejesh S Manjunath, Priya J Achar, and Nalme Nachiyar
Director: Srinidhi Bengaluru
That is where Srinidhi’s experiment gets interesting. The camera begins as a means of attracting attention, but as the Tarle Gang travels further, it gradually feels less like something they control. GoPros, DSLRs, phones and CCTV offer different ways of seeing the journey and the places they encounter. Avinaasha Shastry’s cinematography accommodates images that were never meant to fit neatly together, while Sanjeev Jagirdar’s editing brings these fragments together without making them look overly arranged.
The roughness matters. Found footage should not look prim and polished. People filming themselves while frightened or confused are unlikely to find the perfect frame or hold a camera steady for a dramatic shot. Odd angles, abrupt movements, faces slipping out of frame and incomplete images contribute to the feeling that this is something recorded rather than staged. Video understands that subtle distinction more often than it ignores it.
The horror is less assured. Some jump scares arrive with familiar cues, making them easier to anticipate. The film is more engaging, however, when it simply allows the Tarle Gang to process what they are seeing. The unfamiliarity of the journey becomes a source of uncertainty, and those moments suit the found-footage approach better than the more conventional scares.
The fictional Diniwa tribe brings cannibalism, occult practices, a lunar eclipse and mysterious locations into the film’s world. Cannibalism has a long history in cinema as a way of making unfamiliar communities appear frightening or less than human. Video touches that tradition without turning it into a social argument.
A later reference to The Last Cannibals of India adds another intriguing layer. The mention of years spent collecting research and stories, and of publication being held back by pressure from different quarters, makes us look at the recordings differently. Without revealing where the film takes this material, they begin to feel like more than footage gathered for a million views — they seem like fragments of a larger investigation.
That is perhaps the film’s strongest idea: the camera changes purpose. It begins as a tool for attention, becomes a witness and eventually feels like a record. The title Video consequently becomes more than a reference to the medium through which the story is told.
The actors work best when they remain casual. Bharath K Tumkur, Jeevan Shivakumar, Tejesh S Manjunath, Priya J Achar and Nalme Nachiyar create the sense of a group that has spent enough time together to irritate, joke with and depend on one another. Their fear does not always have the polish of conventional horror performances, but this works within a format that cannot afford to look too rehearsed.
Prasanna Kumar’s music and sound work help build the atmosphere, even if some horror cues are familiar. Deekshith Shetty, backing the film as producer, is also worth noting because Video is the kind of experiment that needs someone willing to take a chance. For Srinidhi, following Blink, this is another departure rather than a repeat of his earlier work.
The film’s darker thought lies beneath its cannibalism, blood and occult imagery. What makes cannibalism disturbing is not merely the act itself, but what it says about the distance between human beings and monsters. Video comes closest to something unsettling when it turns our attention towards what people can do to their own kind.
The Tarle Gang set out to celebrate hitting a million subscribers. They wanted a story to take back to their audience. What they record instead is nothing like the celebration they had planned.
