Rent-A-Pal mines loneliness for tense thrills.
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The Setup
It's 1990 and our lead character is David, a lonely man stuck at home with his ailing mother. Hoping for some sense of connection, David picks a VHS called Rent-A-Pal that's designed to simulate a friendship with a man named Andy. But as David bonds with Andy and attempts to make a life outside his home, he begins to wonder about Andy's true nature.
Rent-A-Pal is a great low budget horror thriller. It stumbles a little bit towards the end, likely due to its need to escalate and end things quickly, but the basic elements all work.
David, both in writing and performance, is a character that's easy to sympathize with and judge at the same time. It's admirable that he's caring for his aging mother but it's also clear that he's emotionally and socially awkward and views his mother's care as both his duty and a burden. Even the way he dresses and carries himself reads as stunted youth or awkward. And since David dosen't have a job during the day, or any other human interaction besides the ups and downs of his mother, a video of a friendly face makes sense.
He's skeptical at first but David seems to appreciate the false sense of connection and predictability of his time with Andy. It also doesn't hurt that Andy is played by a charismatic Will Weaton, who tows the line between fake, scary, and overly familiar. And that undercurrent of creepiness is confirmed when Andy starts pushing David to ignore a new love interest or bring up David's troubled family history.
From here the movie is letting the audience decide what's going on. Is this an unhealthy break from reality to help David cope with his life? Or this something truly malevolent about these tapes? And more importantly...can David make positive changes in his life without sabotaging them? This last question is thrown into focus when David gets a real chance at romance, with a woman who seems to understand him perfectly, and Andy pushes against it.
As frustrating as some might find it, I like that the movie keeps the nature of the tape open-ended. While David's psyche is filling in some blanks, it's clear that he was on edge even before he watched this tape. He has deep seeded resentments towards the world and how his life ended up that he's never addressed. He seems to live in darkness, thanks in the part to the cinematography, and this video is a literally a light that livens up his life. So maybe the tape is messing with him and maybe he's had a break with reality. Either way, he was primed for this and he's still responsible for his actions.
Brian Landis Folkins captures this shift in David really well. Turns like this are hard to do because you need to invoke audience sympathy early and then question have them question that sympathy down the line, and his slow burn performance does this perfectly. It adds another layer of tension to an alredy tense view. This seemed like a good guy. Can we turn things around?
My only major critique is the film's run time. I think there's two or three scenes that introduce questions the film has no intention of answering (i.e. the nature of the tape) that could've been cut and would allow the film to maintain its tension. Likewise, the final 5-10 minutes feel like a sprint compared to the film's slow burn pace. But the early scenes are still very strong.
Verdict: Suitably Creepy
Mining loneliness for tension, Rent-A-Pal makes the most of a small cast and strong premise for a creepy view. 7/10
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