The Last Video Store (2023)
There is something genuinely bittersweet about the video rental shop as a cultural relic. For anyone who grew up in Britain or Ireland during the 1980s and early 1990s, the local video store was a kind of temple, its back shelves lined with lurid VHS covers promising monsters, mayhem, and the kind of carnage the BBC would never sanction before the watershed. The rise of streaming has, of course, rendered all of that more or less extinct, but it has also handed filmmakers a readymade subject for nostalgia, one that independent horror in particular has been happy to pick up and run with. Castle Freak showed how low-budget genre filmmaking can lean into its own limitations with a certain knowing relish, and Moshari demonstrated that genuinely unsettling horror need not cost a fortune. The Last Video Store, a 2023 Canadian production from Genco Pictures and NJC Picture Company, plants its flag firmly in that same low-budget territory, though its ambitions are rather more playful than frightening.
The premise is the sort of thing you might scribble on a beer mat and call a pitch: a young woman unwittingly brings a cursed VHS tape into the last surviving video rental shop in town, and all hell, quite literally, breaks loose as a parade of cinematic villains spills out of the tapes and into the aisles. It is a concept built for affectionate pastiche, and the film wears that intention on its sleeve from the opening frames. Behind the camera, co-directors Tim Rutherford and Cody Kennedy are working squarely within the Canadian independent scene, a space that has always had a healthy appetite for genre oddities (the country that gave us Cronenberg is hardly unfamiliar with peculiar horror). This is not a production with a notable budget to speak of, and the film clocks in at a brisk 79 minutes, which is probably wise given the nature of what it is attempting. The script leans on the anthology-adjacent structure popularised by found-footage series and low-fi horror collections, a tradition that has proven both remarkably durable and highly variable in quality.
The principal cast is a largely unfamiliar ensemble, which suits the grindhouse register the film is chasing. Yaayaa Adams takes the lead as Nyla, the unwitting carrier of the cursed tape, and she is paired with Kevin Martin as the video store's proprietor Kevin, a role that asks for equal parts deadpan reaction and enthusiastic genre mugging. Leland Tilden, Josh Lenner, and Matthew Kennedy round out the key players, each contributing to the film's deliberately heightened, campy atmosphere. Nobody here is gunning for a BAFTA, nor should they be. The performances are calibrated to match the material, which is to say they are broad, self-aware, and occasionally very funny in the way that only genuinely committed silliness can be. For a point of comparison, think of how the Resident Evil franchise learned to embrace its own absurdity as the films wore on, though The Last Video Store is operating on a fraction of that budget and with considerably more charm per pound spent.
You always have to judge a movie for what it’s actually trying to achieve. In the case of The Last Video Store, the 2023 Canadian comedy-horror directed by Tim Rutherford and Cody Kennedy, that goal is pretty clear from the get-go. It’s a loving, unapologetic B-movie tribute to the 1980s video rental era, and to be completely fair, it achieves exactly that. It knows it’s a bit of a nostalgic romp, and it leans into that firmly tongue-in-cheek vibe without ever taking itself too seriously.
Following Nyla (played by Yaayaa Adams) and Kevin (Kevin Martin) as they deal with the chaos of the shop and its quirky patrons, the film is packed with the kind of cheeky, low-budget charm that defined the bargain-bin horror section of your local video store. The directors clearly know their stuff, throwing in plenty of winks to the schlock cinema of decades past. It’s not exactly groundbreaking, and the acting is very much in line with the grindhouse aesthetic they’re chasing, but the cast clearly knows they’re in on the joke and delivers exactly the kind of campy energy the script demands.
Ultimately, though, it’s nothing particularly special. It’s not the kind of film I’d necessarily recommend inviting your mates round to watch on a Friday night with a few beers, as it lacks the sharp wit or genuine thrills to hold a group's attention. But if you catch it on a quiet evening and you’ve got a soft spot for retro horror nonsense, it’s a fun time regardless. The Last Video Store is a perfectly serviceable, mildly entertaining love letter to a bygone era that does exactly what it says on the tin, even if it doesn't leave much of a lasting impression once the credits roll.
The Last Video Store will find its natural audience among genre enthusiasts with a particular fondness for the kind of films that used to lurk at the bottom of the rental pile, the ones with terrible cover art and surprisingly committed performances from people you have never heard of. It is a modest picture, polished but unremarkable, and it sits comfortably alongside other recent low-budget genre curiosities reviewed on this site, including the short-form dread of Moshari. Whether it earns a place in your watchlist probably depends less on your tolerance for B-movie roughness than on how warmly you remember the smell of a video shop on a Friday evening. If that sentence already made you a bit nostalgic, you will likely get something out of it. If it did not, no cursed tape in the world is going to change your mind.
Rating: ★★½ | Year: 2023 | Watched: 2026-06-12
Trailer
▶ Watch the official trailer for The Last Video Store (2023) on YouTube
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
Stream: Shudder · Arrow Video Amazon Channel · Shudder Amazon Channel
Rent: Apple TV Store · Amazon Video · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Buy: Apple TV Store · Amazon Video · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi
Watch in the US
Stream: AMC+ Amazon Channel · YouTube TV · Philo · Shudder
Rent: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Buy: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Physical: Amazon US
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