What is the scariest experience you’ve had in a movie theater?
This week’s AVQ&A is in honor of Halloween Kills hitting theaters this weekend
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Graphic: Natalie Peeples
This week’s AVQ&A is in honor of Halloween Kills, the second movie in David Gordon Green’s Halloween reboot/sequel trilogy, hitting theaters this weekend:
What is the scariest experience you’ve had in a movie theater?
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May 19th, 1999, ~2AM: Lined up for hours to see a midnight showing of The Phantom Menace. Thought the movie was terrible — the only one of my friends enjoying it was always-too-stoned guy.Just as [spoilers?] the Trade Federation ship blew up and the movie cut to the classic ground shot of people cheering, the theatre went completely dark, the audio cut out, and all that could be heard was the flapping sound of ripped film spinning on its reel.A few seconds went by until someone yelled out: “RIOT!” Popcorn started flying as the packed house made for the exits, our only sources of light. Ushers handed out stacks of free movie vouchers as we left, assuring us that the film would be fixed in a few minutes.I shook the popcorn out of my hair, headed home, and never saw the end of the movie.
Since you didn’t see the rest, Anakin dies podracing (who the hell lets a kid do the high tech version of stock car racing?) and the galaxy is saved from the Empire as Palpatine doesn’t find a suitable apprentice.
Hooray!
Weeesa free!
Yippee!
Not The Phantom Edit we got, but The Phantom Edit we needed.
Event HorizonI worked at a theater, and we would regularly watch new movies the day before release. With Event Horizon, we decided to kill all of the lights in the theater (including the emergency exit lights) so it would be pitch black. The movie’s production design and sound mixing are intentionally unnerving to begin with, and become almost unbearable when you feel completely immersed in it. So much so that for the duration of the film, all of us were squirming in out seats instead of realizing how badly written that movie is.
I have a friend who is still terrified of that movie. We used to torment him by yelling in a deep voice, “DO YOU SEE?!?” anytime he was least expecting it.
Event Horizon is the one I was going to write. It is basically Hell House (in space!) but God it was scary. Also I used to watch horror movies on a Sunday with the hangover. Nightwatch was a good one, but the one I will always remember is The Ring: the room was also full of noisy teenagers throwing popcorn and all, but half an hour in they all were silent as if they were at a funeral.
This is weird: some of the scariest movies I’ve seen, I didn’t see in theaters. Event Horizon, Candyman (original), In The Mouth Of Madness. Some of the images in The Ring and The Grudge were very creepy but by the end I was just confused and annoyed.
My “scariest experience in a movie theater” had nothing to do with the film (Occulus) than the group of gentlemen seated behind us.
I watched The Ring remake in the situation described and when I already had watched the original (in an art cinema in Madrid, with some friends from Uni, where the highlight was a guy besides us falling asleep and snoring loudly), and I tell you that that deformed face in the beginning shocked the whole cinema full of people who pretended to have a great time and laugh at the movie. I give this one to Verbinski: he really gets the narrative from the beginning and does not let go.Having said that, the final TV scene on the Nakata original works way WAY better. I don’t fully like any of the Hideo Nakata films but he always get a fantastic shot or scene on each one of them.
I went to see The Blair Witch Project in the theater when it first came out. The power in the theater went out during the creepy night in the woods. It scared me at the time and, being familiar with the some of the gimmicks in the film’s marketing, I assumed that it was another gimmick. It was not until later that I learned that it was a just a well timed blackout.
Me too. Were you in Detroit by chance?
In 2007 I got invited to a free screening of Paranormal Activity. My wife and I are huge horror movie fans so I thought it might be fun. A the time I knew nothing about the movie beyond the fact that it was a found footage film. However If I had known that the movie was about a women who gets out of bed in the middle of the night and unbeknownst to herself does a bunch of extremely creepy stuff I probably wouldn’t have gone. You see, my wife suffers from parasomnia and night terrors. That night while we were sleeping I roll over and see my wife is staring at me. She whispers. “Show me your face.” I’ve been through this before so I know the routine. I calmly say “Susie, it’s me. John. Your husband. You’re having a night terror”. To which she replies in a lower more guttural voice than before, “SHOW ME YOUR REAL FACE”. And then screams. It was a rough night for both of us. But ultimately I didn’t get murdered in my sleep so I guess it was okay.
“The Ring” really takes the cake. I knew something was coming though; you know how there’s a gut feeling that the end credits should be rolling a scene or two after the climax… but then the movie keeps going. The feeling of doom somehow hadn’t yet lifted even after Samara’s soul was supposedly free. I was in a sold out theater, and about 20 seconds before the TV scene, I grabbed my wife’s hand and whispered “Hang on, here we go.”So good. People in the theater shrieked.But really, I’m old enough to remember Jobeth Williams sliding into the muddy swimming pool hole in “Poltergeist” … and then going back in for seconds. The Ring might be the champ, but Poltergeist, (forgive the pun) did the groundwork.
Poltergeist, god that terrified me. Elm Street still wins for me (PetSematary #2), but Poltergeist is definitely top ten😎
Scariest moment as a kid was watching an Ewok get blasted in Return of the Jedi. Mom made me stay and watch the credits to prove to me that it was an actor in a costume.Other “scary”/weird moment was when the fire alarm went off during a showing of Backdraft. It took a few moments to register that we needed to leave, thankfully there was no actual emergency.
I was bored one day and had a bunch of time to kill before a gig so I went to the big movie theater in Times Square and saw Sinister. It was around 5pm and the theater was entirely empty except for me.
Sinister isn’t the scariest movie, it’s pretty typical horror fare these days but seeing that absolutely ALONE in a dark theater was something else
I’m with you on Paranormal Activity. Buzz was *just* starting on it and the distributor was only booking on-demand screenings before it went wide. Saw a midnight screening in Toronto and was rattled pretty good at the end. Drove home the 45 minutes back to the burbs at 2am. Crawl into bed. 4am or so: my dog wakes me by standing on the corner of the bed and growl into the pitch-black hallway. Thanks, lil’ buddy.
I wish I were making that up. I really do.
I’ve been in a theater a few times where the theater seemed creepy. Once I was with my cousin’s and they were scared to go to the basement of the theater to use the bathroom in Flushing Queens NY. It was really creepy, I can’t remember the movie.As far as scariest movies? Insidious scared the fuck out of me, I was 37 my cousins were 14 and 18 and I was so fucking scared of the Bride in black and the girls were scared of the demon. Good times.I saw Jaws 2 in the theater at age 4-5 and I never learned to swim. Scared me shitless and I love Sharks as an adult and Jaws in my favorite movie ever.I saw 1979 Dracula in the theater with a Christopher lee movie as a double feature in Times Square with my parnets. The Lee version also scared me as I was 5/6 years old.