10 Problems With The Modern Movie Industry Nobody Ever Admits

8. Cinema Etiquette Is Irreversibly Changing

The movie starts. Silence and attentiveness, right? Ha, nope. People continue their conversations as we enter the opening titles. Someone gets a bit peckish and starts eating the snack they snuck in, searching for plastic bags within plastic bags, moving slowly in the misguided attempt that it'll annoy people less. Someone else rustles the bottom of their popcorn bucket while their friend eats pungent nachos with loud crunches. A couple turn up, now ten minutes into the film, using their torch light to find their way to their seats. Once they settle down there's a bit of chatter before trying to follow the already in progress film. As the movie gets into its swing things only get worse. A kid in the row behind starts kicking the seat in front of him, sending reverberations the length of the cinema. Someone goes to the toilet and when they return they too shine a light in your face. Someone keeps texting every five minutes, oblivious that light is in many ways more disruptive than noise. Someone falls asleep and starts snoring loudly. A kid who is probably too young for the movie gets bored and starts chattering to their parents. A couple of people who've just got out of another movie sneak in halfway through and, not getting the movie, start chattering quietly. Going to the cinema is sh*t. There, I said it. Those examples have all been part of my cinema experience in the past few months (and some of that's in press screenings, where you'd like to think people would be well behaved) and the regularity of the worst offences (the repeated texting, disruptive late arrivals) is worrying - this behaviour is begrudgingly accepted by the masses, becoming part of the experience. And I'm far from the only one getting worn down by this - it's turning off anyone who goes to the cinema for anything more than a way to kill a Friday evening.