The Last Videostore

Director: Cody Kennedy & Tim Rutherford
Script: Joshua Roach and Tim Rutherford
Cast: Kevin Martin, Yaayan Adams, Leland Tilden, Alain Williams
Running time: 79 minutes
Year: 2023
Certificate: 15

Before coming on-board to review this film, I read its synopsis and realised that, regardless of the actual quality of the film, I knew I’d ‘get’ what the filmmakers were aiming for, as I’m a big fan of videos (to this day) and have fond, nostalgic memories of spending hours choosing what videos to watch with my teenage buddies back in the 1980s, when video rental was at its most prolific/popular. And, just spending time with the eccentric video store owner in this film made it worth a watch, although I have to say, I was a little disappointed by it as a whole.

The film kicks off with an elderly man sitting in his lounge with a strange-looking VHS tape before him, on top of a pile of equally shabby and dodgy looking titles including the likes of Warpgate, Beaver Lake Massacre Part 4: Overtime Kills and Preystalker. The camera zooms into the TV screen in front of him and the texted introductory crawl speaks of a time, long ago, when there were numerous video stores – gateways to distant worlds – but, now, sadly only one remains…

The film then cuts to a darkened back alley, and we’re introduced to our heroine, Nyla (Yaayaa Adams), standing before the door of Blaster Video. She enters and walks down into the dark and dingy environs of the basement-situated store and eventually encounters the owner, Kevin (played by Kevin Martin, who actually does run a video store). Nyla has brought back the tapes from the prologue, including the really odd looking one that her father hadn’t returned, due to his untimely death.

Kevin decides to play said tape, which turns out to be the Videonomicon, a sort of technological version of Lovecraft’s book, the Necronomicon. Weird imagery flashes across the screen, which worries Kevin so he tries to prise it out of the player, but is zapped across the room for his troubles. Shortly after, the alien bug creature from Preystalker appears in the shop and starts stalking its two human inhabitants.

It seems that this is a cursed tape that has been lost for decades and the duo find themselves trapped in the store and having to fight off various real-life incarnations of the main characters (mostly villains) from the films that Nyla returned. It’s then down to Kevin and his nerdy knowledge of B – Z movies to keep them alive.

As one can imagine this is a fun throwback and love letter to times past from the directors Cody Kennedy and Tim Rutherford, who were basically expanding a short film of the same name, from 2013. However, I’d have to agree with other reviewers that the main negative issue about the film is, that in the expansion, this is basically a one joke film, which struggles to sustain the idea throughout its feature-length runtime. Still, on the bright side, it’s still a lot of goofy fun to watch, with plenty of silly over-the-top gore and slime on display to complement the main character’s frequent gurning.

There’s a lot of low-budget filming ingenuity on display here, with some excellent VFX, considering what must have been a very small budget. And the acting, while not great, is serviceable and kind of suits the look and feel of the movie. My main bugbear with the film, from a technical aspect, was the sound design, which all too often has Kevin’s fun monologues drowned out by overly loud music, which is a shame, as I rather think there were some cool quips hidden away in those speeches.

This was clearly a labour of love by guys who obviously love B movies, of all sorts of genres (Sci-fi, horror, martial arts, etc.) and therefore, for me, it is somewhat ‘critic proof’, since its short-comings could also be seen as part of its strengths. I’m looking forward to seeing what they make next, although hopefully they get out of the video store as I think they might have mined that creative stream for long enough, judging by most of the extras on the disc.

As per usual Arrow Video have put together some decent special features:

Audio commentary with film critics Matt Donato and Meagan Neuasso – While the track is fun to listen to, I felt that, given the subject matter and tone of the film, it might have been better having both commentators be older and therefore more familiar with actually renting videos out, since Matt is clearly too young to have had that experience. They both see the film as being a bit of a homage to Canadasploitation films and talk about seeing the film at Fantastic fest and during their intro the makers admitting that it had been a labour of love.

The Videonomicon unleashed (14 mins) – A video essay by film critic Heather Wilson (author of Monsters, Makeup and effects, where she says the film is clearly encouraging the viewer to reminisce about the thrill of visiting video shops and she points out some of the cool posters that can be seen in the background, including Subspecies and Bite. She sums it up as being a ‘cinematic elegy of a past, long-gone’.

Nostalgic Fuel (13 mins) – Another video essay, this time by writer/film critic Martyn Pedler, who himself cut his teeth as a video store clerk during the 90s. Clearly very passionate about the film he talks about the use of static, the electronic soundtrack and the funky lighting. I agreed with much of what Martyn said, including his statement that: “the things that you love should take up space in your life”. In this instance he’s referring to VHS, but it could apply to any medium that someone chooses to collect, whether that is Vinyl, CDs, tapes or books. He also reminds us why video stores (just like books stores) were a good place to go, since they didn’t ‘flatten your choice’ of films to see, which is what online algorithms these days tend to do.

There are a number of short films the film makers made prior to this, their first feature.

Twas the night of the tree beast (2012 – 5.5 mins) A fun short that sees video shop owners arguing over their Xmas tree, which later comes to life and attacks them. While the voice-over was tricky to hear I did enjoy the monster Xmas tree with Xmas lights as teeth.

M is for magnetic tape (2013 – 3 mins) – Video shop owner Kevin turns into a video ninja to take on a gangster and his equally unlikely ninjas. The best quote comes from Ninja Kev saying: “I am terminating your memory”!

The Last Videostore (2013 – 10 mins) – Another fun short, which, again, is set in a sleazy, dingy video store replete with Kevin as the proprietor. An unlabelled gold VHS tape tries to take out the video store and turns into a man-shaped video destroyer with remote controls for hands. There’s also a cool heavy metal song, by Forester, over the closing credits, entitled The Last Video Store.

The Video Store Commercial (2019 – 4 mins) – This is a film within a film about the making of a fake TV commercial, which includes faces melting and plenty of silly sight gags.

More extras include:

First attempt (5 mins) – Assorted clips from the filmmakers’ first go at filming the feature. These include more talk about bearsploitation films and a great spider TV creature and little tape spiders that go all ‘face hugger’ on the humans. There are also homages to the Japanese Tetsui (Iron Man) film.

Pre- Viz (1.44 mins) – Shots taking us round the video shop interiors. We can see the video counter is made up of old video tapes.

Preystalker sequence (1.47 mins) – An animated storyboard – a very slow one!

End scene (2.45 mins) – Another animated sequence, which again is very slow motion.

Behind the scenes (12,50 mins) – Some interesting behind-the-scenes footage including the construction of the video store set, and short sequences showing them shooting the film at different stages, including pick-up shots. We also get to see some very cool VFX models.

Trailer (2 mins) – The tag line is ‘The Evil Dead meets Clerks’, which is a good summary.

Image Gallery – 50 stills from the film