Going into a movie blind

[Gaith]

I don't like going into movies cold - I'm always distracted by wishing I had a sweater.

Hey, thanks, really, I'll be here all night!

I never see a movie without checking Metacritic or, when that's not possible, skimming through a few reviews at least, though I'm very careful to avoid as much as possible about movies I know I want to see. I don't think I was sure that Gwyneth was in Avengers, for instance, and I didn't know that Judi Dench was in the new Jane Eyre. (I did accidentally learn of the big cameo in X-Men: First Class, which pissed me off, though it hardly ruined the movie, and at least there was the other cameo to enjoy.) Apart from the director, stars, and plot era, I knew next to nothing about the story of Atonement, which I frickin' loved. It could conceivably be neat to see a movie I know I hadn't seen before totally blind, but I'd have to really trust the selecter's judgment.



... Anyhow, I was once (long ago) stuck in a house with next to nothing to do, and pretty much the only VHS (whose box was an awards consideration packaging, thus revealing almost nothing) was this:

Happily, it turned out to be a darn good movie. And a rather the sexy one, too! Alas, the unrated cut, with a bit more nudity and a great minute-long coda, is not on dvd. Or blu! Which makes me blue. A semi-blue movie likes this deserves better. 'Cause it doesn't blow.

... I'll show myself out now.​

 

[SiorX]

I used to do this all the times as an undergrad. I had a 12-month cinema pass, and didn't own a TV or read entertainment magazines. My friend and I would just rock up to the cinema and pick a title that we'd never heard of. We got pretty good at not even looking around at posters inside the cinema (which might have given us genre clues as well as info on who was in it).

One of the most fun parts was trying to gauge what kind of film was about to start based on the audience demographic and the trailers.

I saw some good movies that way. And a lot of utter rubbish. I'd love to take the hobby back up if I can ever afford a pass again.

 

[Dac]

I was pretty unspoiled about The Cabin In The Woods when I saw it. All I knew was there was a bunch of kids, it was written by Joss Whedon and there was a giant forceshield involved (I saw the back end of a trailer once).

I was absolutely mind blown by it, one of the best movie experiences I've ever had. It doesn't hurt that the film itself is great and right up my alley when it comes to what I want out of a movie, and that I've never seen a film go full crazy like that before.

 

[Timelord79 (he/him)]

All the time.

We have a series here at our local theatre called Sneak Peek.

You never know what movie they will play, just that it's a premier and undubbed (Germany here).
So I end up seeing a whole lot of movies I've never seen trailers or other promotional stuff or even heard of before.

There are a few stinkers in there but also a lot of at least good movies I'd never would have picked deliberately. So that balances out I guess.

 

[Alidar Jarok]

But on the other hand, I've come to realize that if they hardly talk about the movie itself, that something sounds wrong. For example, when Harrison Ford was promoting Indy 4 and doing the publicity tour, I remembered watching him on a talk show and while they had spent a lot of time on him, he hadn't talked about Indy 4 or given any details about it other than it was coming out.

Well, to be fair, Harrison Ford has always seemed to hate interviews. I'm sure he would have been as stingy with details for Star Wars had he been asked.

ETA: If I include Netflix, I can add a couple more (Snatch is one of the top of my head), but I generally read the description of the movie, at least.

 

[Rowdy Roddy McDowall]

If you go to a movie after seeing the trailer, that probably doesn't qualify as blind. I'd call it such if the newspaper ad didn't disclose the plot but only the actors, as in my case. There were no apparent trailers for SURVIVAL QUEST.

 

[Starbreaker]

The only thing I knew about Fellowship of the Ring going into the movie was that 9 dudes walked up a mountain, as seen in the first teaser.

 

[Rowdy Roddy McDowall]

Not cold or blind enough. They gave you a brief moving visual.

 

[Alidar Jarok]

Eh, as long as you have no idea what the movie is about, that's fine.

 

[tomalak301]

I think the last movie I went in not knowing much was earlier this year when The Descendants game out. I had seen some of the trailer and thought it was a comedy, and I knew George Clooney was in it. Boy I was wrong on the Comedy bit because it ended up being one of the more depressing films I've ever seen.

 

[Colonel Green]

Its become a lot more common since I started workin' for a movie theater. Before this job, I would watch a trailer or read up about a movie I was payin' to see. I'd even watch trailers for stuff I had free passes for, just to decide it if was worth waitin' in line.

Now, I just walk up & pick what I haven't seen yet, and sometimes that means goin' into a movie I wouldn't watch in a million years...

I saw a lot of movies this way when I worked for a movie theatre as a teenager. These days the only time I see a movie blind is if I'm at the video store (yes, I still go to one) and there is nothing that I've heard of that I want to see.

Saw Ever Since the World Ended this way last week. I quite enjoyed it, all I really knew from the cover was that it had won a best film award at a SciFi film festival.

 

[Alidar Jarok]

I think the last movie I went in not knowing much was earlier this year when The Descendants game out. I had seen some of the trailer and thought it was a comedy, and I knew George Clooney was in it. Boy I was wrong on the Comedy bit because it ended up being one of the more depressing films I've ever seen.

Well that's not blind because you saw the trailer. It may be bad marketing, but that's not quite the same thing.

I used to do this all the times as an undergrad. I had a 12-month cinema pass, and didn't own a TV or read entertainment magazines. My friend and I would just rock up to the cinema and pick a title that we'd never heard of. We got pretty good at not even looking around at posters inside the cinema (which might have given us genre clues as well as info on who was in it).

One of the most fun parts was trying to gauge what kind of film was about to start based on the audience demographic and the trailers.

I saw some good movies that way. And a lot of utter rubbish. I'd love to take the hobby back up if I can ever afford a pass again.

I like the idea of doing it as a hobby instead of just a fluke. Unfortunately, I don't have the time or money for this, but it sounds like it could be an interesting experience once you've done a couple to know the routine.

 

[Non Sync]

Sorcerer (1977) with Roy Scheider, directed by William Friedkin. It opened the same weekend as Star Wars, which I saw the next day. It was a Friday night and really didn’t have anything else to do so I thought I’d check out Sorcerer without a clue of what it was about. I missed the opening and the first scene I saw was handheld footage of war in Beirut that abruptly cuts to a tree lined street in Paris and a couple speaking in French.

It did turn out to be a good movie, but I was really wondering what I had walked in to...

 

[auntiehill]

I rarely go in "blind" on a movie; I've seen so many movies already and have so many that I'd like to see but haven't yet. I just don't want to waste the time, I guess. The very few times I've gone in completely blind, I've ended up hating it. Bad luck, I guess.

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

I was taken to see Under the Tuscan Sun by some women nine years ago which I had never heard of. I spent the whole movie obsessively thinking about how spending that time doing absolutely anything would be better. I'm not a good candidate for going in blind as there are few genres I can sit through. I often feel trapped in a theater and intensely bored which doesn't happen at home with a dvd because I can multitask.

 

[Owain Taggart]

But on the other hand, I've come to realize that if they hardly talk about the movie itself, that something sounds wrong. For example, when Harrison Ford was promoting Indy 4 and doing the publicity tour, I remembered watching him on a talk show and while they had spent a lot of time on him, he hadn't talked about Indy 4 or given any details about it other than it was coming out.

Well, to be fair, Harrison Ford has always seemed to hate interviews. I'm sure he would have been as stingy with details for Star Wars had he been asked.

Yeah, you're right. He is. He always seems rather uncomfortable in interviews. However in this one, they talked a lot. Just not a lot about the movie itself, as if it were an afterthought, even though this was to promote the movie.

 

[tomalak301]

I think the last movie I went in not knowing much was earlier this year when The Descendants game out. I had seen some of the trailer and thought it was a comedy, and I knew George Clooney was in it. Boy I was wrong on the Comedy bit because it ended up being one of the more depressing films I've ever seen.

Well that's not blind because you saw the trailer. It may be bad marketing, but that's not quite the same thing.

Even if you saw like 5 seconds of the trailer? I guess I wonder how far do we go on the definition of blind. Is it pretty much not knowing anything about the movie, especially those who are in it? With the availability of media these days, I would think it's hard to go into a movie completely blind.

 

[Mister Fandango]

Has anyone ever gone to see a movie without having seen anything about it beforehand?

I actually had the advantage of seeing The Matrix that way. Long enough that it made it to the video rental place. What miniscule information I had about it lead me to believe that it was just going to be another insipid hacker flick like the one Angelina Jolie was in, maybe taking place in a future earth or something. While it's not the greatest movie ever, I was completely blown away by it once it dawned on me what was going on. I have no doubt that my ignorance of what it was contributed significantly to that.

Now with movies advertising years ahead of their release and the utter impossibility of avoiding things if you surf the web to any significant degree, it's nigh impossible for me to have that experience. It's usually only independent or little known films that catch me by surprise now. Chocolat, Memento, and Being John Malcovich are some notable examples for me, and I ended up loving all three.

While people won't admit it to themselves, going in with expectations is the major way of insuring that you're going to hate a film, especially if you go in hating it already. Which, honestly, is something I will never understand. But, c'est la vie.

 

[Flying Spaghetti Monster]

I went to see Remo Williams: the Adventure Begins knowing nothing at all, nadda!. I was pulled in by the action, the story, the music (with it's Indiana Jones-like theme!)the comedy, but mainly the characters. When Remo was balancing on something, I was on the edge of my seat wondering if he'd fall. I still don't know how they safely filmed the scene where Remo is and his master are running along the side of a tall building.

But it came to the characters, the funny/serious interplay between Joel Grey as Chiun and Fred Ward as Remo, right down to their final lines. I found myself caring - really caring - when it was revealed in the middle of the film that part of Chiun's contract was that he would have to kill Remo if it was necessary for the agency to disappear.

It was the first film I saw with my buddies with no parents around and I was hooked. I loved and still do.

 

[Ood Sigma]

The only time I can remember seeing a movie knowing *nothing* about it was for a movie called "A Price Above Rubies" which I saw while visiting my wife's grandmother in Florida, and we just went to the local theater and picked a movie at random.

I just looked it up on IMDB because I couldn't remember if I had the title right (yeah it made that much of an impression)... and I see that Christopher Eccleston was in it! Very cool for a Doctor Who fan like me!