So last night I went to see Sherlock Holmes at a normal Cineworld showing and was so annoyed by certain members of the audience that I feel compelled to moan and rant about it today. Whilst some young unsupervised kids were rustling food wrappers constantly and talking through the whole film they were not actually the main problem, as about 15 minutes into the actual film (not during the trailers) a couple of latecomers came and sat next to us – and despite the film being a 12A they had decided to bring along their child who must have been about 5 or 6 years old. At first this was surprising because they arrived to a pretty gruesome hanging scene and I thought they might have to remove him if they had any sense of responsibility. But 10 minutes later he was fast asleep and for the next hour and half all anyone in the back half of the cinema could here was this child incessantly snoring! Honestly it was the loudest snoring I’ve heard from such a small person and despite people shouting out to stop the snoring and going to get an (absolutely useless) member of staff the couple didn’t wake up or remove the child to my deep frustration.
I am one of those people who loves to watch a film in stillness and silence and when I do go to regular screenings try to aim for quiet ones such as in the daytime. There’s so many things that people do to annoy me I don’t even know where to start! There’s the main two annoyances of food rustlers and loud talkers, who I often just simply tell to shut up if their bothering me. However after a patron in a Leeds cinema did just that recently the offender retaliated by throwing bleach over their face in one scary incident.
In smaller screenings people going to the toilet can be very distracting especially if they’ve chosen to sit far from an aisle and their whole row has to stand up to let them pass. People who heckle or have annoying loud laughs can often grate on me as well – especially those who laugh incessantly at inappropriate moments when nothing remotely funny has happened. Other things that can drive me crazy are chair-kickers, fidgeters, latecomers – especially those who spend 5 minutes discussing where to sit especially worse if they obscure subtitles to do so or even latecomers who ask you to move up so they can sit together. In recent years those people who insist on still using their phones in the cinema has become more and more – last night the child’s mother actually took this to a new level and took a phone call during the film!
Why bother to pay for the cinema if our not actually watching the film are my feelings in these cases! Especially in London where cinema prices are so steep! So vent over, what annoys you most?
