Your most "visceral" experience at a movie theater.

[BookTenTiger]

The AV Club has a great little article about visceral experiences at the movie theater.

What are your most memorable movie theater experiences? The ones when the movie hits just right, your emotional state is just right, and you are totally carried away?

For me, the movie theater experiences that hit me just right and just at the right moment are...

Mad Max: Fury Road (I remember driving on the highway at night after and my heart just pounding)

300 (I'm not really a big fan of the movie, but seeing it opening night in college surrounded by other young people just hooting and hollering, I was a big fan for that night!)

Signs (I had literally no idea what the movie was about and it really, really worked for me. That scene in which Joaquin Phoenix is in the closet watching the TV, and on the TV they are all watching a home movie, and everyone is leaning in and leaning in and then BAM! Oh man that really got me.)

Whiplash (I saw this right as I began my education to become a teacher. The way the main character is just watching, watching, watching everyone. And then the teacher's escalating abuse... It really hit me hard in the theater, and the grim humor worked for me too. Me and one other guy in the audience kept laughing out loud while everyone else gasped.)

What movies hit you at the movie theater in the right way?

PS: please spoiler spoilers!

 

[The Soloist]

The original theatrical release of Star Wars in 1977.

The Wall by Alan Parker.

Blade Runner.

Ran by Kurosawa.

Terminator 2.

The Matrix.

Saving Private Ryan's opening sequence.

The Arrival by Denis Villeneuve.

 

[Maggan]

Pirates of the Carribbean, when the undead walk under the water to climb on to the ship I just couldn't container myself and laughed out in delight.

Matrix. Didn't catch the hype, didn't know what it was about. Blew me away.

Lord of the Rings. This time I caught the hype, and the movie delivered in spades.

The Naked Gun. Didn't know anything about the movie. I literally died from laughter and I am writing this from the other side ... (a slight exaggeration).

 

[aco175]

My dad tells the story of bringing my brother and myself to the original Star Wars. I was 5 at the time and do not quite recall it the same way, but he says it was the easiest movie he took us to. Nobody needed to get up for popcorm. Nobody needed to go to the bathroom. Nothing. We just sat there from the opening sequence with the giant ship flying over starring at the screen.

 

[The Soloist]

My dad tells the story of bringing my brother and myself to the original Star Wars. I was 5 at the time and do not quite recall it the same way, but he says it was the easiest movie he took us to. Nobody needed to get up for popcorm. Nobody needed to go to the bathroom. Nothing. We just sat there from the opening sequence with the giant ship flying over starring at the screen.

I was 12, and I think I stopped breathing for the duration.

 

[Reynard]

This was not a good experience but: the Jessica Biel "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" remake was the most unrelenting horror movie I had ever seen, with no peaks and valleys or breaks. I like horror even, but by the end of that movie I was a twisted ball of anxiety and desperation to the TF out of there.

 

[payn]

There have a been a few times I got the cult experience. Once when locally they did a Rock Horror Picture Show weekly showing during the year. Seeing all the fans dress up and shout out parts made it feel more like a theatrical experience than going to see a movie. After that, Bruce Campbell was on a book tour. He did a Q&A and hung out as we got to watch Evil Dead the original. Everybody was laughing and bracing and it was a fun shared experience. God, that must have been nearly 25 years ago...

My ex-wife and I went to see The Revenant one night. Its pretty damn cold here in Minneapolis during the winter. I think the theater chain had the HVAC system on a scheduler and the set point temp dropped noticeably during the late night showing. Folks were putting their jackets and gloves back on. It gave a very visceral experience to the film.

Finally, I went to see 28 Days Later on a Sunday afternoon. The theater is near downtown Minneapolis on the bank of the Mississippi river. Folks were sitting on patios and enjoying drinks before the show. The mid-west isnt known for having lively Sundays and things tend to shut down early. Though the visceral change in a hundreds of people talking and sipping drinks transitioning to empty streets with the only sound of wind blowing after the film let out was creepy AF.

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

First five-ten minutes of Indiana Jones & the Raiders of the Lost Ark, from the opening credits to the seaplane flying off into the distance. Really set the tone for the whole film, and the first really good pulp action-adventure kid me had ever seen in those pre-cable, pre-internet days of yore. The rest of the film was very good (obviously), but didn't resonate with me as strongly as the opening.

Didn't hurt that is was opening day and I had no idea what was coming. Hard to get that experience any more. Lot of people citing Star Wars here, but I'd read the Alan Dean Foster novelization the night before I first saw the movie, so not much surprise there.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

This was not a good experience but: the Jessica Biel "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" remake was the most unrelenting horror movie I had ever seen, with no peaks and valleys or breaks. I like horror even, but by the end of that movie I was a twisted ball of anxiety and desperation to the TF out of there.

Not quite the same but also similar, this reminds me of my experience with Krzysztof Kieślowski's film "A Short Film About Killing". An arthouse movie I went to in a small theatre in Dublin. It is an unrelentingly bleak movie. There is a murder scene in it, where half the audience (of admittedly about 40 people) left and left me questioning my humanity. The only time I left a cinema desperately needing whiskey.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

On a more cheerful note, written or in film, the scene at the end of the Two Towers where the cock crows and the horns of Rohan can be heard in the distance always brings a tear to my eyes. (ok in the movie they leave out the cock crowing but keep the horn call).