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Within the world of movies and the culture around the art form, remarking, “we never knew how good we had it,” is preaching to the choir. Between wide theatrical releases and a diverse array of mid-budget films produced by major studios, yearning for a bygone era is the prevailing sentiment in these corners of the Internet. Nowhere is this mindset more prominent than with video stores and the existence of VHS in general. Both an obsolete business and medium, we happily graduated from video stores, VHS tapes, and DVDs/Blu-rays with the advent of streaming, only to realize that they represented a tactile purity and sense of community that has since been marginalized in movie culture. The new documentary, Videoheaven, directed by Alex Ross Perry and available to stream (ironically so) on The Criterion Channel, understands this, and this nearly three-hour video essay is sure to inject every ounce of video store nostalgia into your veins.

‘Videoheaven’ Recalls the Omnipresence of Video Stores in Pop Culture

There was nothing else like the video rental shop, a retail business that was ubiquitous from the late 1980s through the early 2000s, evident by its strange commercial and cultural arc in the public. Beginning as a hole-in-the-wall enterprise synonymous with seedy customers that only sell B-movie schlock and ending as a family-friendly, homogenized corporate entity, headlined by the megachain, Blockbuster, indie filmmaker Alex Ross Perry takes you on a nostalgic journey about the industry’s trajectory and legacy on a generation’s worth of cinephiles, and how either your local mom-and-pop joint or chain helped strengthen our movie culture.

Narrated by Maya Hawke, whose parents, Uma Thurman and Ethan Hawke, were pivotal figures in the ’90s indie movement, Videoheaven is solely comprised of archive news footage and clips from movies and TV shows featuring video stores. The documentary emphasizes the prevalence of rental shops for over a decade based on how often tentpole movies and network sitcoms depicted characters browsing the shelves, discussing the quality of movies, and haggling with snobbish clerks. For those who grew up in this period and younger audiences, you’ll be blown away by how frequently video stores were a setting. They were not only omnipresent, but they were understood as a hub for all walks of life, and not just avid film buffs. Videoheaven is a worthy watch just to watch a curated compilation of scenes from movies that capture ’90s cinephilia like Scream, Clerks, Ghost World, and the modernized Hamlet, as well as household-name sitcoms like Seinfeld and Frasier.

‘Videoheaven’ Represents a More Innocent and Prosperous Time for Moviegoing

With its dense runtime and the didactic nature of Perry’s analysis of consumerism and the intersection of art and commerce, Videoheaven will likely rub some viewers the wrong way. Then again, a glorified video essay about the history of renting VHS tapes is already an uber-niche subject. Luckily, the film ascends beyond the surface-level nostalgia-baiting that hinders many ’90s-set narrative movies. Perry underlines how the downfall of video stores was inevitable when they ostensibly became monopolized due to the rise of Blockbuster, a company we now romanticize despite watering down the grungy aesthetic of local shops. Once they were integrated into corporate America and started popping up in Hollywood movies, video stores slowly lost their unique charm, no longer seeming like the cool hotspot to find under-the-radar genre cult classics like Videodrome or the latest effort by Troma Entertainment.

From a 2026 perspective, it’s refreshing to watch a film about the proliferation of home video without it being portrayed as the harbinger of doom for the theatrical industry. The realization that theatrical exhibition and rental stores were not competitors, but rather, symbiotic partners, is where the nostalgia kicks in, as Perry convincingly shows that this ephemeral era represented the halcyon days of movies as an industry and culture. Action blockbusters, comedies, experimental cinema, genre exploitation, and prestige dramas existed harmoniously. Where cinephilia can feel isolating today, back then, you were forced to select your next watch for the weekend with other strangers. Having temporary ownership of a tape rather than a streaming file and chatting about your selection with a clerk who may or may not be too highfalutin about their big-screen knowledge gave moviegoing a personality. Renting videos, by nature, is a shared experience, explaining why movies existed in the monoculture for generations.

Videoheaven is the definitive text of the video store. An emotionally resonant love letter told with the precision of an investigative piece of nonfiction, Alex Ross Perry leaves no stone unturned in his trip down memory lane. After watching this film, you’ll wish you had an overdue tape to rewind and pay a late fee for.

Videoheaven is available to stream on The Criterion Channel in the U.S.