PLOT: In 1990 Colorado, 40-year-old David (Brian Landis Folkins) lives at home and cares for his demented 73-year old mother. To break the monotony, he attempts to meet women on a video dating service. But when David finds a VHS tape called Rent-A-Pal, he becomes obsessed with his new so-called friend, Andy (Will Wheaton).
REVIEW: September 11th marks the arrival of RENT-A-PAL (WATCH IT HERE) courtesy of IFC Midnight, the superbly disturbing directorial debut from longtime cameraman-cum-filmmaker Jon Stevenson (EAT, HOAX). While less of an outright horror flick or a hyper-violent thriller (at least until the final reel), the movie functions best as an effectively enigmatic character-driven piece of psychological terror with equally unnerving results. That is, the existential threat in the film is not so much a monstrous external force as it is an internal sense of crippling despair that drives a man so lonely and desperate for human contact that, in the end, the harm inflicted on him and those around him literally becomes tantamount to any sense of physical menace. With a coolly executed conceit, slick first-time direction, and solid central performances from the three leads, RENT-A-PAL offers a deeply disquieting glimpse into the unraveling mind of a lonely and lifeless loser.
The film takes place near Denver, Colorado in 1990. David (Folkins) is a 40-year-old single man who lives with his mother Lucille (Kathleen Brady). Lucille suffers from dementia that requires her son’s 24-hour care, leaving no time for David to enjoy a life of his own. He doesn’t even have a job but subsists on Lucille’s social security. Intensely lonely, the too-tightly cropped hairdo and pedophilic eyewear on David isn’t doing him any favors. As a hobby, he tries to meet single women via Video Rendezvous, a video dating service that pairs new couples based on their recorded profile interview. It’s been six months since David has updated his profile, prompting him to leave his mother’s side and record a new one since he’s had no female matches during that span. At Video Rendezvous, David records a sympathetically heartfelt interview, which the director forces him to re-record down to 30-seconds, resulting in an awfully embarrassing profile video.
Shocked to learn he’s found no matches with his new recording, David finds a VHS called Rent-A-Pal before leaving the video-store. He takes it home, pops it in, and is greeted by the creepily over-friendly Andy (Wheaton), a sweater-vested cross between a Good-Guys Doll and Mr. F*cking Rogers. A bit put off at first, David begins to play the video on a loop, memorizing the dialogue, until he fully buys into the role-playing dynamic at work. Andy obviously cannot see or hear David and is operating on a series of generic pre-recorded dialogue that could apply to any viewer. Yet David feels a profound personal connection with Andy, as the two spend nights chatting, playing Go-fish, trading embarrassing stories, etc. Meanwhile, Lucille keeps mentioning David’s father, a suicidal jazz musician who she thinks is alive, well, and still performing. As the film unspools, Lucille’s warped mental state becomes paralleled with David’s own sense of psychological slippage.
There’s no use pressing the plot from here, except to say that when David finally does make a video-match with a likeminded woman named Lisa (Amy Rutledge), Stevenson does a wonderful job of eliciting sympathy for the character during a successful roller-skating date. The brilliance in the movie is the ambiguity between a sad protagonist and a mad antagonist David vacillates between as the story progresses. He’s never entirely vile or evil nor entirely good-natured or heroic but instead finds himself stuck somewhere in the middle. We feel for David’s sense of soul-crushing despair brought on by his pathetically meager existence. But we also come to fear this guy as well once he cannot escape the psychological trappings this damn Rent-A-Pal video has sprung on his fragile mental state. I don’t recall seeing this Folkins fella before, but he absolutely crushes this role as David, a complex character whose actions are understandable up to a certain point, and whose dire circumstances we feel for until he can longer hew to his moral compass.
Aside from the splendid central performance, the throwback VHS-aspect of the premise is quite cool as well. Despite being shot in 4K digital, I loved how efforts were made to make the film appear as if it really came out in 1990. Not only are the VHS videos within the film properly grainy and scratchy (loved the VCR “tracking dial” we all used to fidget with for better resolution), but the film itself does not feel overly-polished so as not to believe the specific timeframe it’s set in. I hate when period-pieces are far too clean, glossy, and overproduced, as there is no faster way to bleed the credibility and immersion of the story. Also, because the movie is such a low-budget affair, Stevenson wisely chose to tell a story with just a few characters and a couple of locations. The delicacy he finds in making the limited setting feel claustrophobic without feeling unbearable, to feel fresh and never boring, is among the movies undoubted strengths as well.
In terms of complaints, I suppose one could argue that David’s transition from a lonely and lovable loser into the complete opposite is made too fast and isn’t all that convincing enough as a result. I’d buy that argument, except to say you just never can know what goes on in the mind of anyone else. Not to justify his ultimate actions, but especially someone like David who has several reasons for ending up where he does, parental bullying as a child chief among them. No, the bigger issue for me would be to question why David forgoes such a beautiful promise in Lisa to seek the approval of Andy, who we know has never actually met David in person. But that’s nowhere near enough to exclude a recommendation for a feature debut that has far more good than bad going for it.
All told, RENT-A-PAL executes a fascinating, character-driven premise of a man succumbing to the vexing psychological pressures of intense loneliness. With a swift directorial style and excellent performances to boot, find yourself a RENT-A-PAL when it drops this Friday.