THE LAST VIDEO STORE (2023)

3 stars 

Arrow Video. Limited Edition Blu ray. Now Available.

The film opens with a man in his front room. A strange VHS tape in his hand. The TV is showing as static. He bangs it down onto a pile of boxed tapes – Warpgate, Beaver Lake Massacre Part 4 – Overtime Kills and Preystalker. Zoom into the screen and the intro talks of long ago when there were numerous video stores – ‘gateways to distant worlds’. Now only one remains. Okay… seems reasonable.

In a back alley, Nyla (Yaayaa Adams) finds Blaster Video. She enters the dark and dingy environs and eventually the owner Kevin (Kevin Martin, who actually does run a video store) appears. She has brought back the tapes from the opener including the odd one. He decides to play said tape which turns out to be the Videonomicon, a sort of take on Lovecraft’s Necronomicon. Weird imagery flashes across the screen – trying to prise it out of the player he is zapped across the room – then the bug from Preystalker appears in the shop!

It seems this a cursed tape that has been lost for decades and the duo find themselves trapped in the store and having to fight various real life incarnations of the characters from the films she returned. Can Kevin’s nerdy knowledge of B movies help them to survive?

This starts out as fun throwback and the directors Cody Kennedy and Tim Rutherford, expanding a short film of the same name from 2013, clearly have an affection for all those B and C movies that cluttered up the shelves back in the day at your local outlet. The issue is, that in the expansion, this is basically a one joke film which can’t sustain the idea throughout and you begin to lose interest as things progress. At least, like many of the movies it is riffing on, it’s only 78 minutes long. The finale is suitably shot in a low budget style. As is evidenced by the short films included in the extras, which include the one this was based on, this kind of story has been an obsession of the filmmakers for some time.

Steve Kirkham

EXTRAS

Audio commentary by film critics Matt Donato & Meagan Navarro

The Videonomicon Unleashed – visual essay by film critic Heather Wixson (14 mins)

Nostalgia Fuel – visual essay by film critic Martyn Pedlar (12 mins)

A bunch of short films :’Twas the Night of the Tree Beast (2012), M is For Magnetic Tape (2013), The Last Video Store (2013) and The Video Store Commercial (2019).

First attempt – archive glimpse at the first attempt at a feature version (4 mins)

Plus Behind the Scenes (12 mins); Pre-viz of 3 sequences; Trailer; Image Gallery

You also get an illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing by film critics Anton Bitel and Alexandra West; Reversible sleeve featuring newly commissioned artwork by John Pearson; Double-sided fold-out poster featuring newly commissioned artwork by John Pearson