Directors Cody Kennedy and Tim Rutherford are passionate about the warming nostalgia of VHS. That should be obvious from the fact that this feature is their third or fourth attempt at presenting a story that not only takes place in a video store, but puts the central characters in the midst of some genre fare very similar to some straight to video favourites of yesteryear.
Yaayaa Adams plays a young woman who wanders into a video store to return some tapes that were rented by her father, but she's unwittingly also carrying a very special artefact, a cursed tape that allows the fictional worlds to bleed through to our reality. It may help that the store clerk, Kevin (Kevin Martin), knows all about the many movies on the racking around him. Or maybe some assistance can come in the form of Viper (Josh Lenner), an action hero veteran of the era.
Although it's Kennedy and Rutherford credited with the direction, and although Rutherford and Joshua Roach are the named writers, The Last Video Store is the kind of thing that feels very much like something in which the roles weren't all clearly defined. Martin may star as the store clerk, but he also runs his own video store, and that locaton inspired the look of the main setting here. I have no doubt that Martin tried to keep adding some jokes and references, considering his passion for film, which makes it all the more surprising that this is a feature barely able to make it to a runtime of just under 80 minutes.
Perhaps those involved hampered themselves slightly by not simply settling on an anthology format, and also not throwing one or two extra sub-genre delights into the mix, but what we get here is amusing and entertaining enough, with all of the love and enthusiasm more than making up for any shortcomings. The main characters end up being stalked by a familiar-but-legally-dissimilar masked killer, which is decent fun, but things really improve when Viper swaggers in to frame. Adding one or two other elements does help, but there was room for so much more here. This needed a character from a strangely dark children's movie, it needed a big puppet/doll figure, and maybe some cannibals. Hell, throw in a Shannon Tweed cameo and it would be near perfect. As it is, sadly, it feels appropriately akin to those many VHS boxes that promised way more than they ever delivered.
Adams and Martin work well together, bringing very different energies that intertwine well as they become caught up in the wild danger unfolding around them, Lenner is fantastic as a character who feels like equal parts Lundgren, Dudikoff, and Van Damme, and Leland Tilden delivers a fine physical performance as Castor Creely, the aforementioned masked killer. There are also a good number of quick cameos, including the ever-welcome Jeremy Gardner onscreen for a fleeting few seconds.
This is an easy sell to those who share the same love for those video store years, the times when you would pick up a big title at the weekend alongside a couple of unknown features that could turn out to be real treasures or real trash, but it's also lacking something to make it as great as it could be. It's perfectly fine, the brief runtime ensures it won't outstay its welcome, and the many nods to other movies work well. It's just not a week one rental. More like something you'd grab in the 3 for £5 deal.
6/10
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