10 Times People Died While Watching Movies

5. A Man Died Of Alcohol Poisoning During Twilight: Eclipse

twilight eclipse pic
Summit Entertainment

Many of us have joked about how we'd rather die than watch a Twilight movie, but tragically, that scenario actually came true for a 23-year-old homeless man in July 2010.

Without buying a ticket, the unemployed Damian Anthony Smythe found his way into a screening of the third entry in the Twilight series - Eclipse - in a cinema in Wellington. Taking his seat to watch the film, Smythe began to drink a bottle of Johnny Walker Red Label whiskey, before he slumped forward and began to have a nap.

It wasn't until theatre staff started to clean the screen up that Smythe was found, his face blue and cold, with an empty one-litre whiskey bottle beside him. An ambulance was called, but it was already too late: Smythe had died of alcohol poisoning towards the end of the film.

Smythe had a lot of personal troubles, and didn't have much support in his life. It was thought that these circumstances contributed to his drinking problem, and subsequently, his death, at a frustratingly young age. The Twilight series sucks, but it's definitely better than that.

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Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!