I often hear people complaining about how disruptive it is to watch movies in cinemas when there are people—usually younger ones—making noise, phones ringing, the crunch-crunch of chips bags, or just general commotion.
Now, personally… I enjoy the noise in movie theaters. Hear me out before you ban me from all cinemas, cover me in nacho cheese, or stuff boiling popcorn under my armpits.
I do understand why people get annoyed—of course, I’ve been annoyed myself plenty of times, mostly before I changed my mind.
I remember watching a movie about World War II (can’t recall which one), and hearing teenagers nearby loudly exclaim, as if in shock, how bad the German soldiers were. I’ve been in theaters with shouting crowds, witnessed arguments, overheard live phone calls, and endured running commentary in real time.
Sure, these things disrupt your focus; they pull you out of the movie’s atmosphere. I get it, I do. But at the same time, I feel the excitement of the audience, their desire to connect with the space and the people around them—a desire for a collective experience, even if it’s a bit clumsy. People clap, they make their presence known, they’re saying, “We’re watching this together,” in all sorts of ways. For many, laughter comes more easily when you're in a cinema. Even silly comments add to the atmosphere. The annoying voices and ringing phones, they all create a tapestry that defines the cinema-going experience.
It’s a human experience, a live reaction to the film playing on the screen. Every glance from a stranger, every voice in the theater, every “slurp” from a straw, every “crunch” of a snack bag—all of it contributes to the unique atmosphere of the cinema. These individual elements are refracted through a lens that shapes the collective experience of watching a movie in a theater.
Someone might get excited and shout, someone else might yawn out of boredom, another person might comment loudly on the film, while some will leave their phones on loud, and others might laugh or cry. And yes, there might even be someone taking a phone call about selling stocks.
When I watch movies in a theater, I quietly whisper to the person next to me (if I know them, of course—not to random strangers), but I’ve also been a teenager. I’ve been annoying. I’ve shouted. I’ve gone to the cinema drunk. I’ve ruined other people’s experience.
I feel like, as we grow older, we distance ourselves from this kind of experience—the teenage chaos, the unfiltered excitement (like on buses, when kids make noise, you always see tired stares and grumbles from adults). And, okay, it’s good that we grow out of it because we don’t want to bother others. But at the same time, we lose the ability to enjoy the process, to appreciate the reactions of those who haven’t distanced themselves yet.
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When I go to the movies, I go to watch the film, sure, but I also go to experience it through this lens: the collective experience, with all its ups and downs. I go to the cinema to immerse myself in this shared moment, not to get lost in the movie’s atmosphere—that’s something I can do better at home, where I control the conditions. I want to see how the audience reacts; I want to overhear gossip, arguments, laughter, phone calls about someone’s mom delivering a Tupperware.
And honestly, I’ve been to the cinema many times, but the moments I remember the most are the ones involving strange situations (or even disruptions), not the movies themselves. For example, I remember the day I went to see Spider-Man 2 at an open-air theater, and the screening started before it was dark. For 25 minutes, we couldn’t see a thing—not us in the theater, nor the guy sitting on his balcony in a plastic chair with a beer, trying to watch from home. I remember someone yelling a spoiler during a movie, something like, “That’s the killer!” I recall all kinds of moments like that, from when I was young to now, whether I was actively involved or just a bystander.
If I’m watching a horror movie about summer camps and chainsaws, I definitely prefer a noisy theater. Same for comedies. If it’s a drama or something requiring more attention, I might lean toward quiet. But even then, I still enjoy the raw process of movie-going. Even when something bothers me, I end up laughing at every “crunch” and “slurp,” having accepted and embraced the fact that the theater is an unpredictable, living organism.
