Warning: Spoilers for the above video below. Don’t read further if you don’t want to be spoiled!
Back in 2013, Blockbuster announced that it would be closing the last of the rental chain’s brick and mortar stores as well as its mail operation. And in the three years that have passed, while many stores have been converted into Dollar Generals or H&R Blocks or whatever the heck you put in an old Blockbuster, at least a handful of old stores remain throughout the country, vacant and undisturbed by time, as a constant reminder of a bygone era.
The filmmaker in this video happened upon one such remaining Blockbuster store in south Texas, and decided to take a tour through, promising a “wicked twist” at the end. As he starts walking through, panning across what appears to be freshly stocked candy and aisles of Wii games, it becomes quickly apparent what the “twist” is, if you didn’t see this coming like a Shyamalan movie. In the final shot, he turns the camera around on himself, and lo and behold he is an employee at one of the approximately 50 Blockbuster stores that remain open in North America — mostly in Texas, Oregon, and Alaska, but scattered in a handful of other states.
So there’s your terrifying discovery: In 2016, apparently people do still rent and watch DVDs the old fashioned way. Now you know.