What was your worst moviegoing/theater experience?

[RumblyTumbly]

I have made it a personal policy to not go see horror movies in theaters anymore because every time, and I do mean EVERY SINGLE GODDAMN TIME, I have seen a horror movie in theaters, I have been with loud mouthed idiots that talk through the whole movie. I understand screaming and reacting to the scares, but I don't need your running commentary throughout the whole freaking movie. If you're going to talk through the movie, then just stay at home and watch a movie. Good grief!

 

[Tragi-Chan]

Mine have been pretty mild compared to some people's, but...

- I went to see Mars Attacks with a friend (I'd already seen it). There was a bunch of kids a few rows back who kept shouting spoilers and just generally being little shits.
- When I went to see Thor 2, there was this family a couple of rows ahead who kept yakking away really loudly. Whenever something big happened on screen, one of them would demand to know what happened and the others would try their best to explain. The only time they shut up was during the trailer for Winter Soldier, when one of them demanded to know who the black guy was.
- When I was about 4, my aunt took me to see The Jungle Book on a re-release. Turned out it wasn't being shown that day, so we watched Crocodile Dundee II, and I was absolutely bored shitless.

 

[TheImportantFart]

There are two that stick out in my mind:

1. When I went to see Baby Driver, there were a group of yobs being disruptive in the cinema. I knew we were going to have trouble with them the second they came in because they sat in the special VIP area even though they obviously didn’t have tickets and were told to move by an usher. Then the film started and they began whooping, cheering and fighting with each other. Eventually, a woman had enough and spoke to an employee who told them to shut the fuck up and gave them a warning. That was when the real fun began. The group ended up splitting into two halves which turned on each other. One faction moved a few seats down and a swearing/popcorn throwing match ensued between the two factions. Soon, one of them tired of the battle and went to get an usher to try and get his former friends kicked out. This backfired spectacularly as he was recognised as being part of the original group causing trouble and he and the others were escorted out by security. This would’ve been quite funny, but it didn’t change the fact they’d ruined half of a perfectly good film.
2. We had a sped in our screening of Infinity War who would not shut the flying fuck up. She talked loudly throughout every scene and had a wrangler with her who she was constantly asking questions. This was actually worse than the yobs because there was almost no chance of her being removed since cinema staff wouldn’t want to look like they were discriminating against disabled people, even though this woman was competent enough to tell her handler to shut up when he told her to keep quiet. She completely ruined the film with her antics and I was so wound up by the end I ended up flipping her a double bird as she left, hate crime accusations be damned. This may sound cruel, but if you can’t control yourself during regular screenings, you shouldn’t be attending them.

 

[Sinner's Sandwich]

The 2 worst experiences where 1. Blade Runner 2049 because I got the stomach flu in the middle of the movie and became sick really quickly but I suffered until the end because I liked the movie. I dodn't puke but my stomach and my head hurt like hell.

The second worst experience was the last Hobbit movie because it was a pile of orc shit. I felt really bad after watching it and I will never watch it again.

 

[drtoboggan]

I saw The Big Lebowski way back when. There was a group of about 8 black people in the theater(yeah, uh oh), and The Big Lebowski is a movie that is defiantly what you would classify as a "white people comedy". The humor in the movie was completely lost on the blacks, and it sailed about 6 feet over their heads. The black people became offended that the white people in the theater were in hysterics when there was clearly nothing funny happening on the screen, so the blacks concluded that the laughter was in mockery of them.

I swear, this did happen.

The blacks actually got angry and started yelling like "How that spoda be funny? Karl Hungus? Ain't nothin' funny about that."

People were shushing them, but that only got the black people more belligerent and disruptive. The black people eventually got up and walked out, but one of them yelled "This movie fuckin' stoopit!" on the way out.

And then everyone went back to watching the Dude abide.

Black people are savages.

 

[Malodorous Merkin]

Black people are savages.

Harsh but fair.

 

[Red Hood]

When the first Spider-Man with Tobey Maguire came out I saw it in a packed theater. And some chucklefuck gets a cell phone call (at a time when not everyone had cell phones) and proceeds to get a call, and talk loudly for about five minutes until someone grabbed an usher. Dickhead then proceeds to make a bigger scene by throwing a tantrum.
Honestly I remember that better than the movie.

Oh, and I saw Attack of the Clones in theaters, too.

 

[Midlife Sperglord]

Watching that crappy Leonardo DiCaprio Romeo and Juliet movie. It was a family movie trip, and I was just a kid then, so walking out of the movie ten minutes into it was not really a politically acceptable option for me at that time.

 

[punished_snake]

When I was younger, my family went to go see the Mockingjay Part 3 on opening weekend. Throughout the movie, two girls had laser pointers and would point on the screen when really dramatic moments would occur. This upset the whole theatre to the point somebody got a manager to get them to chill out. After the movie, we find out that one of the girls who had the laser pointers was my ma's co-workers.

 

[Pickle Inspector]

I've not had anything too bad but when I went to see the premier for the the third LOTR movie I got a seat next to a cliched looking neckbeard who managed to sneak in an entire lasagna with him, he ate it pretty quietly though.

I was once at a movie where a coach trip of 'special people' who screamed and cried loudly throughout turn up with their carers but I guess they can't help it and their carers were pretty good at keeping them quiet all things considered.

 

[Kommie]

I went to see Star Wars The Last Jedi with my dad and brothers with the small hope that maybe it'll be an okay movie. Instead we had to see a shitty movie with a couple chuckle fucks acting like wiggers in the back yelling reddit memes and spouting obscenities through the whole movie. Me and my dad were so close to just standing up and telling them to fuck off before the movie ended.

 

[Gordon Cole]

It's something I didn't sit through, but at work I had a couple walk out of the theater I was looking after because the guy to the left of them had bad breath, and the guy on the right wouldn't stop farting.

Ahh, old people. Will they ever learn?

 

[toilet_rainbow]

There was this asshole that kept snapchatting during Ponyo. My brother actually yelled at him to fuck off and he left.

One time I was forced into watching Kicking and Screaming (a shitty Will Farrell movie) at a discount theater and this mentally handicapped kid squealed and yelled the whole.fucking.time. until he or she was finally wheeled away by their caretaker.

 

[Prompt Critical]

During a port visit a few years ago, I watched The Wolf of Wall Street at a theater in Manama, Bahrain. Unknown to us when we bought tickets, the film had been edited to comply with local obscenity law. Any scenes with use of drugs, sex, or references to homosexuality were edited (i.e. all of them), which meant they cut a bit less than half of the film's total runtime out. So many whole scenes were missing that it wasn't until another viewing years later that I was able to make head or tail of the plot.

Anyway the moral of the story is don't watch movies in shithole arab countries, I guess.

 

[Starscreams Cape]

I despise people who go on their phones when the movie starts. I think it should be legal to bludgeon them over the head or smash their phone against wall. Also, whales who are constantly digging into noisy, plastic bags for their snacks. They also seem to think that doing it slower is somehow less noisy instead of just prolonging the distraction. It should be legal to horsewhip those people.

I don't mind some light conversation so long as it's infrequent.

During the last 30 minutes of the original Avengers movie the sound went out. I'm one of those people that is constantly amazed when other people say or do nothing in situations like that. I waited 5 minutes. Surely someone else is going to inform the management. Of course they didn't. So of course, I had to. I also said, politely, that it was bullshit. Management said to simply ask for a refund and they'd honor it. I tried telling people on the way out but most were simply content to have seen the last half hour of the movie without sound. I would never make the mistake of telling those people now.

These days if I want to see a movie, I go Don Draper style. Taking some time off from work and going on a Tuesday at noon. By myself. If there's more than 3 people in the theater I have a noticeable scowl on my face.

 

[Crichax]

When I went to see Coco with some family, there was a cicada in the theater that chirped for pretty much the whole movie. We did manage to ignore it after a long while, though.

 

[Tasty Tatty]

I was around fourteen and I was supposed to meet some friends to watch a movie in a known mall. My mom drove me there, but my friends couldn't make it (it was in the 90s, we didn't have cellphones and one of my friends didn't even have a phone) and I had no way to know. So, I told her I would wait for them inside. I bought my ticket expecting that they could probably arrive later and I should expect them inside watching the movie.

So, the movie was a bit scary and it was the first time I was watching a movie on my own. I was terrified by both the movie and because I was alone. When the movie ended and I left the theater, my mom wasn't there because she probably thought I would hang out with my friends. I tried to call her, but again, she wasn't at home. So, I walked up and down the mall making time and eventually I called the father of a friend I wasn't very much close anymore, who brought me to her house so I could call my mom. She was having a small party and makign it there was quite embarrassing because they were "cool" and "popular" kids and I was the fucking nerd who was dumped by her own friends in the mall. On my way home, I cried the whole ride.

 

[MerriedxReldnahc]

I've not had any really bad experiences, but I find going to the movies to be a fairly unpleasent thing in general. If I wanted to see a spectacle in a room full of sweaty people while eating shitty food I'd go to Hometown Buffet.

Most annoying thing I can think of is at the last movie I saw in a theater- it was World War Z and in the scene were the dude is in close proximity to a zombie he's trying to evade, this dude behind me would not stop laughing at the noises the zombie was making. Kinda ruined the scene. That's really what I don't like about watching movies in that setting - too much distracting noise.

My parents are weird about theaters and won't go to the nice ones nearby. We'd have to drive half an hour to go to a very specific theater, which has the grodiest fucking popcorn. I don't know why we still spend money on offshore drilling when oil companies could just scrape the buildup off the bottom of popcorn machines. That theater alone could power the tri-county area for a year. I'm not sure there was even corn in it, I think science found a way to solidify salt into the shape and texture of popped corn kernels.

 

[Dolphin Lundgren]

This one's not really the worst and it was more WTF for me. When I saw Titanic in the movie theater there was amazingly no distractions or annoying people in all that time. Except for the part where Leonardo and Kate get pulled away in the suction. This guy in front of me kept telling her "go up, go up, go up" as if he was talking to her. It was annoying and distracting because he was talking out loud.

 

[Oddjob OTP]

Well, two come to mind.

First was pretty straight forward, power surge from a thunderstorm fried the projector during the last 15 minutes of Deadpool 2. Never came up, the theater handed out a voucher I never remembered to use.

Second was Django Unchained, I thought I would be good because I saw it on a weekday matinee but nope, 40-50 year old black women screaming "YOU GET 'UM DJANGO" at the screen the entire movie. It was like a small church group or something, just fucking unreal.