| The Last Video Store | |
| Producer: | Greg Jeffs |
| Cinematography: | Benji Irwin |
| Editing: | Cody Kennedy |
| Distributor: | Blue Finch Film Releasing |
| Runtime: | 90 minutes |
| Country: | Canada |
| Language: | English |
The Last Video Store is a 2023 Canadian comedy horror film directed by Cody Kennedy and Tim Rutherford, and starring Kevin Martin, Yaayaa Adams, Matthew Kennedy, Josh Lenner and Leland Tilden.
The Last Video Store premiered at Fantastic Fest in September 2023.[1] It later screened at FrightFest in London, England, in 2023, and at the Calgary Underground Film Festival in April 2024.[2]
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 83% based on six reviews, with an average rating of 6/10.[3]
Drew Tinnin of Dread Central gave the film a rating of three-and-a-half out of five stars, writing: "The Last Video Store doesn't land every self-referential joke, far from it actually. Still, the loving homage to the so-good-its-bad movies of our childhood just manages to outshine some of the more trying moments of tedium that inevitably come along with this type of sentimentality, a feature that's quickly becoming a subgenre within a subgenre." Matt Donato of /Film gave the film a rating of 7/10, and wrote that while it is "nowhere near a perfect homage to an era of movie-watching that's all but outdated", it is "sincere and resourceful when it counts."[4]
Film critic Kim Newman wrote: "Hyperactive Martin, a real-life DVD store owner, and sceptical Adams make a decent team and it even has a few moments of proper horror amid the retro-trash celebration."[5] Martin Unsworth of Starburst gave the film three out of five stars, writing that the "enthusiasm of all involved is contagious", though he perceived the film as being somewhat derivative, writing: "As it stands, it's a lot of fun, but we can't help feeling that it's all been done before."[6]
Rue Morgues Ryan Dyer commended the film's special effects, and concluded: "The Last Video Store serves as either a reminder of or, for the younger generation, an introduction to this world, as the viewer experiences the film through the cinephilic Martin, who has seen too many movies to count and knows all the tropes, or through Nyla, who is introduced to this niche thanks to Martin's enthusiasm."