Alex Ross Perry’s documentary Videohaven is the perfect visual dissertation that hits all the right emotional and thoughtful notes you want it to without being overly sentimental.

Socio-cultural hub, consumer mecca, and source of existential dread, the video rental store forever changed the way we interact with movies. With narration by Maya Hawke, we learn of this bygone industry’s glorious, confusing, novel, sometimes seedy, but undeniably seismic impact on American movie culture.

For some of a certain generation (sorry Gen Z), there was a fantastic time where, as a young person, you would be taken by your parents to pick out a couple of films to watch over the weekend. For me, even in my early teens, it would involve us getting three films—one for me, one for my older sister and one for the family. You would walk around and EXPLORE, and it was brilliant. As I grew up, my tastes changed, and I acquired my own membership, allowing the weird and wonderful genre films to enter my life. It was a time, a great time, but it ended thanks to streaming. Yet, Alex Ross Perry has brought all that nostalgia back into the old memory banks as if it were yesterday with his nearly three-hour ode to the best form of home entertainment there was.

Director Perry has blended several elements together to create his film. As much as this is a visual representation of the video story, it is also told through rose-tinted eyes, becoming a love letter. However, the informative and educational tone that Perry tries to maintain throughout paints a wonderful portrait of a time when films were not just about clicking endlessly until something piqued your interest. It was a physical, socially connecting dream. You could touch and chat, be swayed by a video clerk and not an algorithm that predicted what you might like. It allowed you to discover. In those three hours, you feel the immense cultural importance of it all.

Moving the viewer through the history of the video cassette, Viderheaven reminds some and educates others how sceptical and distrustful people were with this medium. Weaving through the unknown of what could be on that tape and whether it was dangerous, Hollywood opened its arms and welcomed the medium, seeing the profit potential in the 90s.

Thankfully, Perry mentions that the commercialisation of the video store is part of what slowed the wonder of it. Instead of these independent stores that offered films you would never consider, Hollywood and Blockbuster (as well as XtraVision for the UK market) adopted a more mainstream approach, gradually closing the “mom and pop” stores as the decade progressed. It becomes less about the experience and interactions, and more about convenience and transactional aspects.

To help us fall back into that world and get all melancholy and distant for a few seconds is the excellent use of the footage Perry had on hand. Utilising an immense catalogue of archive footage from adverts to news spots and especially footage from films and TV shows featuring characters in video stores, Videoheaven takes us through the life of the video store, from its conception to its boom, with all the fights with censors, to its slow and painful demise. A great deal of care has been placed here on showing us just how broad the impact of the video store was. You could go on endlessly about each discussion that Videoheaven approaches. In truth, that is where the one real problem of the documentary arises.

The drawback to Videoheaven is, sadly though, its length, running a grand three hours; it falls victim to repeating itself more often than it should, with clips and points also running on as if constructed more as a lecture than a film. This might test the patience of some viewers. For the more patient audience members, it will be fine, but with a bit of a tighter edit, it would allow for the documentary to flow a little smoother than it does.

While the audience feels as if they are almost knee-deep in nostalgia throughout the film, it is notable that Perry’s clever script and direction of Maya Hawke’s narration are in how restrained they are. Perry wants us to slide into the nostalgia as a way of embracing the film while being quite measured, avoiding excessive sentimentality. The advantage of not having talking heads present eliminates the possibility of Videoheaven from verging too far down the nostalgia path.  

Perry does, however, lament the loss of the video store; the loss of this small but important one for film lovers is strongly felt. Those who try to keep a form of it alive are physical media lovers who want to own a film or show and not just have it disappear from a streamer, never to be seen again. An interesting tidbit that Perry mentions is that at some point soon, people referencing such places as the video store would very likely never have been in one. As we get towards the end of the film, you begin to realise that perhaps you were listening to a long eulogy.

Videoheaven is a film for the cinephile, and happily, it doesn’t matter if they are young or old; this is a documentary that pulls you in and keeps you locked in with nostalgia and a hint of sombreness for the old cinephile, yet for the new its a proper glimpse at what they maybe never got to experience fully. It’s a fascinating look at a cultural cycle, the rise and fall of the video store, that formed the basis for so many to love film.

VIDEOHEAVEN opened at NYC’s IFC Center on July 2nd and at LA’s Vidiots on August 6th (as part of a theatrical rollout)

★★★★

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