I have a long list of movies to get through. This was on the list.

Rent-A-Pal is actually not terrible, but it requires some suspension of disbelief. In the 90s, David, a bachelor living in the basement of his parents' old home, has had to put his life on hold to take care of his mother, who has dementia. David is using a dating service through video tapes where one records a brief description of themselves and it gets distributed to people with similar interests. David has had no luck and on his latest trip to the video store, he finds a tape called Rent-A-Pal, a sort of interactive tape where Andy, the man in the video, prompts the watcher to respond in open spaces and then develop a friendship with them. But not all is right with the tape, as things seem to change in the video and Andy becomes more unhinged.

I did enjoy this film for what it was; a mostly single-setting sort of supernatural horror about loneliness, having to put everything aside to care for someone who needs it - while you know it's a noble thing to do and someone has to do it, simultaneously you also hate being unable to live. I thought the movie had really good pacing, things seem to change and happen in ways that are unnoticable to David but really obvious to the viewer, where David is so drawn in to having one single friend (through Andy) that he seems to ignore things that don't make sense - that's why I think it needs a little suspension of disbelief.

The movie was actually just really very long, and even though I said it was well-paced some things probably didn't need to be in it, like [spoiler]David falling asleep to one of his dad's old film reels, which is just a sex tape of his mum and dad? or I guess maybe a random woman on the road that his dad met?[/spoiler] I didn't think David needed to be turned into a creep. He was just a lonely guy looking for love that happened to live in his mum's basement.

Worth a watch.