Stranger Things Star's Love Letter to Blockbuster Finally Hits Streaming

Videoheaven, a 172-minute documentary by Alex Ross Perry narrated by Maya Hawke, is now streaming on The Criterion Channel in the U.S. The film is compiled entirely from archival news footage and clips of movies and television that feature video stores, delivering a concentrated dose of rental-shop nostalgia.

Perry traces the arc of the video rental business from local mom-and-pop shops to the Blockbuster-dominated era, showing how corporate expansion smoothed out the quirks that once made those stores cultural hubs. The documentary emphasizes how often mainstream films and sitcoms used video stores as a setting, underlining their ubiquity in the late 1980s through the early 2000s.

Scenes pulled from Scream, Clerks, Ghost World and a modernized Hamlet sit alongside moments from Seinfeld and Frasier to illustrate how video stores helped bind moviegoing into a shared experience. Perry’s essay-like approach examines consumerism and the intersection of art and commerce, and its dense, didactic style may not suit every viewer.

United States

videoheaven, maya hawke, criterion channel, blockbuster, video stores, video rental, documentary, archival footage, scream, seinfeld