Is movie theater behavior really a big problem?

Some in-theater transgressions are more offensive than others.

The Alamo Drafthouse in downtown Manhattan, like the rest of the chain, has a “zero tolerance” policy about talking and texting.

There’s been a great deal of talk lately about people misbehaving at the movies. 

“Movie-Theater Behavior Has Gone Off the Reels,” the Wall Street Journal reported last August, in a post-Barbenheimer piece that mostly complained about people using their phones in the theater. Around the same time, the Guardian wrote about “Chaos in the aisles: has cinema etiquette reached an all-time low?,” referencing phone usage and a supposed epidemic of fights at the movies. 

Once in a while, there are reports of bad things at specific showings, such as a letter from Chicago’s Music Box theater about a “disruptive audience” at a recent queer-themed screening of David Lynch’s Blue Velvet, at which audience members reacted inappropriately to some of the scenes of sexual abuse in those films. 

There are complaints about this sort of thing all the time, especially since, even when theater chains ask attendees not to talk or use their phones, very few movie theaters are well-staffed enough to enforce any prohibitions, much less physical altercations. 

Now, I’m certainly not above complaining about movie audience behavior from time to time. I attended one early screening recently, which featured multiple crying babies who were never taken out in the hall and one lady who took a FaceTime call mid-movie. At another screening a couple of years ago, the two guys behind me were so stoned that they laughed uproariously at every moment of the Gran Turismo movie—even the sad parts. 

However, my view on this stuff is more nuanced than some.