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Cinemas can be transcendent places. Sitting elbow-to-elbow with your fellow man and basking in the glow of other human imaginations? Joy itself. As long as everybody behaves.
When a few simple rules are followed (phones away, shoes on, no talking, stinky food, or stretching your legs through the gap between the seats in front to rest your stockinged feet next to your neighbour’s nose) it all works like a dream. When those rules aren’t followed, then it’s very easy to wonder why you’ve shelled out £15 for the privilege of hearing your fellow man rustle crisps in the dark and seeing the blue glow of him checking his WhatsApp.
If hell is other people, then cinema multiplexes are where those other people hang out. Here are my movie theatre horror stories. Share yours below.
Exodus: Gods and Kings – In Which a Man Is So Disgusted by Ridley Scott That He Falls Over
I remember very little of Exodus: Gods and Kings the film, which a Google Image search implausibly suggests had John Turturro and Joel Edgerton (?) playing Egyptian pharaohs and wearing eyeliner that made them look like 15-year-old girls trying to get into a nightclub. The cinema trip to see Exodus: Gods and Kings, however, won’t leave me because of the indelible antics of one audience member.
His protests started small but escalated, as the saying goes, quickly. Minutes in, quiet grumbling became less-quiet scoffing, which became a full-throated derisory “HA” any time anything happened on screen. This man was not happy and wanted everybody to know about it. The pub smell coming off him explained his boldness, and also explained what happened after he rose from his seat to declare that “Ridley Scott used to be the best director of his generation!” and then toppled over the row of people sitting in front of him with the grace of a Labrador barrelling into a hedge. A woman quietly crept out after him. I think about her sometimes.
Star Wars: Rogue One – In Which an Entire Cinema Turns Against the Worst Two Women in the World
Imagine being asked by several strangers, in a full cinema on a Friday night, to stop talking during a film, but then instead of apologising, sliding down your seat in shame and spending the rest of the runtime trying to stop your heart from beating quite so distractingly loudly, you turn around to spiritedly argue your case.
What case? “She’s my best friend and we haven’t seen each other for MONTHS!”. So go outside then. “We’ve paid to be here!” So has everybody. Talking resumes, loudly, as do pleas to shut the fuck up so that anybody might hear Felicity Jones trying to steal the plans to the Death Star, followed by a huffy “FINE!” and an extended stropping-out panto soundtracked by theatrical muttering about how some people need to get a life. Once the door swings with them on the other side of it, a polite patter of applause.
If I told you we ran them down with our car later, would you judge us?
A Quiet Place: Day One – In Which a Doritos Cool Original Sharing Bag Has More Lines Than Lupita Nyong’o
It was while trying to watch A Quiet Place: Day One that I realised how the franchise’s ‘make a noise, get your thorax torn open by aliens’ premise must have come about. It had to have been cooked up in a cinema when a fellow audience member chose to crunch their way through, say, a sharing bag of Cool Original Doritos during a film that relies for tension pretty much exclusively on its extremely delicate sound design.
For the love of society, let a marshmallow taken from a cloth bag dissolve slowly on your tongue or eat nothing at all. The clue’s in the name.
Abigail – In Which, For Two of Three Acts, a Family Rooted About at the Bottom of Crisp Packets Looking For What, a Free Toy?
As above, but also including a tray of cinema nachos, which are, as the Wittertainment code of conduct will tell you, of the devil.
Cuckoo – In Which the Only Other Two People in the Cinema Were High on Mushrooms and Vomited in the Car Park
Laughter in a cinema is a wonderful thing and most of the reason to go. The fellow-feeling of being swept up in a the same wave of silly enjoyment as an auditorium full of strangers is, as experiences stand, hard to beat. Much, much easier to beat is the experience of being almost alone in a cinema save for two people who are clearly off their nuts and who spit-laugh at every scene of a middling horror: a dog minding its own business, a woman on a bike, a desk… And then they pull up in front of you in the car park afterwards to vomit out of their car window.
The Worst Person in the World – In Which Two Kids Almost Made Me Believe There Was Hope For the Future, but Then Didn’t
A couple of 13-year-olds? In a screening of a Norwegian comedy-drama? Deciding that, yes, after school today they’re going to spend their pocket money on going to see one of the best reviewed films from the 2021 Cannes Film Festival? How absolutely charming!
Except, of course they hadn’t. The kids had snuck in to a random film to laugh and throw stuff and play Frogger with the cinema staff when they arrived to reluctantly chuck them out. Hope dashed. Everything once again awful.
Les 400 Coups – In Which It’s Not the Fault of the Tall Man in the Seat in Front But I Still Resent Him
They should put subtitles at the top, and not the bottom, of the screen. I hope you enjoyed this TED Talk.
Come back next time for the far longer list of cinema visits I ruined with my own personality/choice of snack.
The post A List of Cinema Visits Ruined By Other People’s Personalities/Choice of Snack appeared first on Den of Geek.
