Review: ‘Rent-A-Pal’ descends into maddening loneliness

“Loneliness is not a tragedy,” Ben Hollis once stated. The bartender-turned-producer had been promoting the unusual release of Rent-a-Friend, a VHS tape released in late 1986. Its purpose was to alleviate loneliness in broken hearts all across America. Hollis played “Sam,” a fictionalized version of the perfect best friend, and he’d ask you about your day, your life, and your passions. As strange as it all sounds, such a VHS was a new frontier of interactive technology, and truthfully, not too far removed from what had been happening since the advent of television itself. “People already use the television as an antidote to loneliness,” Hollis explained to the Chicago Tribune.

34 years later, filmmaker Jon Stevenson reapplies the conceptual makeup of Rent-a-Friend for his own psychologically disturbed vision, Rent-a-Pal, his impressive directorial debut. Written in one month, the story emerged out of Stevenson’s struggle with anxiety and depression, and it took coming across the Hollis video to kick his creativity into high gear. “I’ll never forget… when I saw that video, how it made me feel,” he told a round-table of reporters over a Zoom call last week. As the script flew from his fingertips, it became clear the VHS cassette was simply the conduit to tell a tragic story about one vulnerable man being led “down a very dark path by someone who is evil and manipulative.”

Brian Landis Folkins plays David, a tortured 40-year-old who’s met with only one-way relationships at every single turn. He still lives at home, taking care of his dementia-rattled mother (Kathleen Brady), and has no other companionship to speak of. He seeks romantic connection through Video Rendezvous, a VHS-based dating service, and tape after tape yields nothing but disappointment. After recording a new dating profile video, David stumbles across the Rent-a-Pal tape in the bargain bin by the checkout counter. He takes the cassette in his hands, soaking in the label with wonder, and quickly slips it into his fresh stack of dating tapes.

Enter Andy (played by Wil Wheaton), the chipper and warm Rent-a-Pal host. His eyes are deceptively inviting, and his boy-like charm pierces right through the camera lens. David is skeptical at first, of course, scoffing at Andy’s asinine questions about his family and the sheer absurdity of it all. Slowly but surely, the layers peel back, leaving him vulnerable and exposed, and soon an unlikely kinship blossoms. Their conversations are innocent and honest enough to start, yet Andy nearly always carries a sinister glimmer behind his static gaze. As David becomes more and more invested in his relationship with Andy, an unsettling mood descends around the frame, allowing Stevenson’s artistry to make you squirm. The viewer is never supposed to know whether Andy is actually speaking to David or David’s pain runs so deep, it’s all a fantasy inside his head.

Even Wheaton, whose performance is downright terrifying, wasn’t totally sure what to make of it. “An aspect of the script I really loved, and the thing that moved me from ‘I really like this’ to ‘I have to be part of this,’ was this moment in the script where I went, ‘I don’t know if Andy’s even real…,'” he explained. “There’s an actor named Andy who sat down for a video cassette, but I don’t know if the things that he’s saying… I don’t know if he’s really saying those or if all of this exists inside David’s mind. And I loved that. Either interpretation is completely valid. The picture is satisfying in either case being true. That’s so hard to do, and it’s so rare that that happens.”

With either interpretation, Rent-a-Pal is a grueling descent into the absolute pits of loneliness ⏤ a film so torturous you can’t help but see yourself in David. In an age of quarantine and social distancing, Stevenson’s debut arrives when we have nothing but screens to satiate our hunger for human touch. “We [are] all glued to screens in a variety of different ways and a variety of different devices,” offeres Folkins, whose meaty performance is one of the year’s finest. “I don’t think it’s any different than David in the late ‘80s finding a kinship with a screen, both in trying to date and his Rent-a-Pal.”

David does eventually get a match through the dating service, but he may be too far gone. Lisa (Amy Rutledge) likes everything he likes, from jazz music to helping people, and their first date is, as Folkins describes it, “indie movie magic.” When they meet at the local skating rink, there’s an instant spark, and David’s social awkwardness is met with Lisa’s delightful, easy-going personality. They skate; they laugh; and they take a polaroid to commemorate the blissful, perhaps life-altering, rendezvous.

When you think David could be saved after all, Jon Stevenson pulls the rug out from under you. David’s and Lisa’s paths simply crossed at exactly the wrong time, as David has already been on a fast track to hell with no possibility for redemption. Rent-a-Pal toys with the viewer, and its slow march into sticky blackness drowns in agonizing isolation. And by the time the finale swings at your stomach, there’s little emotion left for you to feel.

Rent-a-Pal hits VOD this Friday (September 11).

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