The Last Video Store (2023) Arrow Player Review

The Last Video Store (2023) Arrow Player Review

This December, genre fans will have a blast with Cody Kennedy & Tim Rutherford’s debut feature on ARROW, THE LAST VIDEO STORE, a love letter to video rental stores and the B-movie treasures that lined their walls – here brought to life with “Blaster Video”, a time capsule to an era in which cover art and a catchy movie title were king, run by Kevin, a human encyclopaedia of VHS.

When her estranged father passes, twenty-something Nyla is tasked with the thing she hates the most – cleaning up his mess. Left behind are a collection of VHS tapes, and with them, the burden of returning them to “Blaster Video” a time capsule to an era in which cover art, and a catchy movie title were king, run by Kevin, a human encyclopaedia of VHS history and a friend of her father. Amongst the returns is an unknown tape, a movie not even Kevin has heard of. Was this the last movie Nyla’s father watched before he died? The mystery is too much to resist. But when Kevin and Nyla press play, they unwittingly activate a long-dormant curse, and a series of classic cinematic villains are plucked from B-movie heaven and hell to be unleashed into the store itself!

I was not expecting to like THE LAST VIDEO STORE as much as I did. The synopsis read as being a video-store based flick with a JUMANJI rift, where an action hero, Jason Voorhees’ style serial killer and deliberately bad-looking alien bug emerge into the real world in place of lions, rhinos, and other associated jungle beasts. I was not a fan of either film version of JUMANJI, or 1993’s LAST ACTION HERO which also had similar DNA, so I was not warming up to the idea of reviewing this.

Where those films failed to make their slim one-note concept work, directors Cody Kennedy & Tim Rutherford’s expansion of their 2013 short makes for an aimable comedy-horror flick that’s all-neon colour schemes and retro-scored to reflect when video stores were king, the 1980’s! There are nods to genre classics, some blatant (there’s an obvious reference to 1981’s THE EVIL DEAD with a video cassette that resembles the Necronomicon book in Raimi’s classic), some less so, which adds to the warm and fuzzy feeling that THE LAST VIDEO STORE elicits from those viewers that are of an age to appreciate both the references and its central video store location.

If there’s a gripe then it’s that the film energy starts to fizzle out towards the end, otherwise this is a solid slice of nostalgia-based entertainment. The small cast work well and the limited location never feel small or limited as there’s a lot of big ideas at play here that make it play larger. Kevin Martin, who plays the lead role of a video store owner Martin, is a real-life DVD store owner and his store the Lobby DVD Shop is Edmonton’s very own last home video store, hits all the right notes as he divulges his seemingly infinitive knowledge of the fictitious movies that play an integral part of this delightful flick.

The Last Video Store will be available on ARROW and Limited-Edition Blu-Ray from 9th December.