At this year’s Academy Awards, Toni Erdmann was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film, but it already had a widely divided reception among critics. Most of the critics in praise of the film said that it required a theatrical experience with an actual audience to keep you paying attention. There was something key to Toni Erdmann and the way it spoke to audiences (at least American audiences) that couldn’t be replicated on your television screen or laptop at home. Some have stated that Toni Erdmann plays better writ large, but most cite the importance of seeing it with an audience, where laughter and tension magnify as everybody feeds off each other’s emotions.

That’s the appeal of seeing most genre movies in theaters. Gross out or sexual comedies usually have jokes of a highbrow and lowbrow nature where a certain segment will laugh in delight until the rest of the theater gets it. Horror movies tend to heighten the tension based on the emotional reactions of the big tough person sitting next to you. Sci-fi and action get more rousing if people actively cheer on the movie. Even bad movies tend to get better or worse based on the number of people booing or walking out of the screening.

I saw Get Out in a relatively full theater on Saturday night at the prime 7:00 screening. This being Seattle, and Get Out playing at a variety of theaters, the audience for this particular screening was predominantly white (by contrast, the audience I was with to watch I Am Not Your Negro was closer to 50/50 or so). Behind me was a group of friends where one loud guy was really into horror movies and made his presence known with hollers and whoops. But, right in my field of vision was an interracial couple with a black woman and her white boyfriend. Though overheard snippets of their post-film conversation hinted that she indeed enjoyed the film, her reaction was noticeably different to the film than for the white audience. She laughed at different times, reacted in different ways and otherwise seemed to be watching a different movie than the people surrounding us, including her boyfriend. In a way, her reaction informed a marked difference between her life experience and the rest of the audience, and changed the reading of the movie from the usual groupthink mob reaction.

Part of the reason I enjoy confrontational cinema is I enjoy watching other audience members wrestle with the film, almost more than I enjoy the film sometimes. Sometimes it can be more fun to watch people squirm than it is to watch what is making them squirm. Watching Punch Drunk Love with a bunch of people who thought they were getting an Adam Sandler movie was an amusing experience. Ditto for the Spring Breakers crowd in a conservative city. That’s not to say I’m above it all. The first hour of Silence was a painful experience for me as I kept wanting to shout “Can’t you see that this Japanese oppression mirrors what you’ve been doing this to Jews and Muslims for hundreds of years in Portugal and Spain?! The inquisition? Helllooo!” I’m sure, before I walked out, my body language was off the charts.

What’s better for you? Do you prefer to see movies with audiences or alone?? Full theaters? Empty theaters? Do you avoid children’s matinees unless you’re actively going with a child? What genres have the best audiences? Would you murder Emma Stone if she stood in front of the movie screen while it played Rebel Without A Cause?