Rent-a-Pal

AroView: This creepy-clever indie thriller set in the world of VHS tape marks an impressive feature debut for writer-director Jon Stevenson.

Brian Landis Folkins plays a lonely bachelor whose social life has surrendered to the full-time care of his ailing mother, with desperation leading to him forming a ‘friendship’ with a smarmy life coach (Wil Wheaton) on a rented video cassette. The absurd interplay between them is as much fun as it is quite convincing, and there’s a romantic interest as well, so you don’t have to be a forty-year-old virgin to appreciate it as a darkly funny rom-com.

“What makes the film work as well as it does, at least up to a point, are the perfectly calibrated performances. Folkins is superb as the socially maladroit David, making his character sympathetic in his genuine satisfaction in being a caretaker despite the personal toll it enacts. And Wheaton, whose entire performance consists of sitting in a chair and talking directly to the camera, uses his innate likeability to at first disarming and then chillingly creepy effect.” ~Frank Scheck, The Hollywood Reporter