This Filmmaker Chronicles the Demise of the Family Video Rental Store

The age of physical media rentals has come to an end, replaced by the convenience of digital streaming. While this new era may be more accessible, there was a certain magic to visiting a brick-and-mortar movie rental store that is now lost. Filmmaker Chad Campbell has managed to capture the nostalgia and sense of mourning surrounding the demise of the rental era, particularly the closure of the Family Video chain. We spoke with Chad to learn more about his journey documenting this cultural shift.

1. What initially inspired you to make this documentary?

Last Days For Videos started out of happenstance. I started to go to Family Video around COVID like late 2020. Things started to reopen and it was one of those places I’d always driven by and been like, “Oh that’s still open.”

Instead of saying that I should probably go and help keep it open, I went, and I started to do some social media stuff for them as well. I knew everyone there. I was friends with them. I loved talking with them. They were great people and then they just told me, “Hey, we’re closing”.

The movie, The Last Blockbuster had just come out and I didn’t want to make a carpet copy of the same thing. So I was holding off forever and then they told me the night before that they were closing. So I took an extended lunch break. I went down and I filmed what we got.

2. How did your own life experiences with video stores shape your perspective on this story?

I grew up with video stores. I grew up in the 90s. So going to Blockbuster every Friday night, that was a big thing. And we didn’t want to go to just Blockbuster.

There was a place called Movie Outposts, and they had five for five Fridays, which was five old releases for $5, and you kept it for seven days. It was amazing and definitely shaped why I wanted to go back to the rental store and my nostalgia for this thing. A lot of kids now have never been to a rental store so they don’t understand what was so cool about them.

3. What has the reaction to the documentary been like from former Family Video employees?

The reaction from Family Video employees has really been just heartwarming to me. Just saying that I was able to, you know, accurately capture a lot of what they loved about the job within that short amount of time and their feelings when it was leaving. And I’m really glad that I was able to do that.

4. The documentary touches on the rapid disruption caused by streaming services – do you think video rental stores can realistically survive in any small capacity going forward?

Video stores are largely dead. I think that they will always exist in some niche capacity. I don’t know if they will catch on like records. In my dreams, all of us who still collect physical media, our dreams are that one day, there’ll be a DVD store, like a record store. We’ll all just go get them, and people will buy their cheap little Crosley Blu-ray players and, but realistically, it’s not the same, right?

5. What do you hope viewers take away after watching your film?

I hope that when someone watches this film, they think about the decisions that all of us, myself included, are making every day, which is just continuing to fuel money to billionaires. We continue to buy off Amazon for everything. Yes, Amazon warehouses give a lot of people jobs, but the people that get the money are the people that don’t need that money. I think that that’s a real thing.

There are a lot of local and small businesses. Even Family Video at the end, had 200 to 300 locations. That’s not really a small business. But in the world of where we get movies from, that’s a small business.

6. Do you have any upcoming projects or documentaries in the works?

I have a lot of upcoming projects. I’m not going to go into super detail about all of them yet. Two of them are in post-production, some of them are in pre-production. One in particular, I opened a free Blockbuster. It’s take a movie, leave a movie. So like a free little library, but with movies. I made one of those, and I did a little documentary about it opening. I hope to have that out within a few months, but definitely before the end of the year.

Starting in 1978 (and recently featured in Stranger Things), Family Video served as a popular film rental store for mid-America, at one time having over 800 locations. Its closure marks the end of video rental chains in the United States, showcasing the final remnant of a once-thriving industry. Watch Last Day For Videos on Reveel