Feel Free to Punch the Person Sitting Behind You
I was invited to the cinema last night to see the new horror film ‘Orphan’. I was really keen to go but couldn’t, but in retrospect I’m glad I didn’t after seeing a Twitter post today from one of the party who did go. It read something like:
“Went to see Orphan last night, wasn’t scary! I roared with laughter the whole way through!”
… which reminded me exactly why, despite being a big horror fan I rarely go to the cinema to see horror films these days: annoying pricks who seem to think the point of a horror film is to be as un-scared as possible, as loudly as possible. Yes well done, you are clearly a big boy now and so very very brave that, yes, why don’t you do your best to spoil any possible tension the film may possess by laughing uproariously at it all the way through.
Perhaps you’d like to come again tomorrow when a comedy is showing and loudly protest, “That wasn’t funny, I didn’t laugh at that, did everyone see me not laughing at that? Anyone who laughed at that is stupid” after every joke?
My suspicion is that they are just worried that if they take the film as it was intended to be watched and let themselves get into it, they know they would be wetting the bed for a week.
n.b. I am of course not talking about the Horror films with intentional humour! Some of my favourite horrors are the ones that get the balance of horror and comedy just right (Braindead, Dellamorte Dellamore, Evil Dead etc).
