According to the results of the 2018 Cinema Census, which saw Flicks investigate the movie-watching behaviour of nearly 5000 citizens of Aotearoa, we are badly behaved in cinemas—and can be pretty hypocritical about it, guilty of the same behaviour we criticise in others.
Answering a phone call during a film was said to be the next most annoying behaviour (33% of respondents). Only 0.4% of people who said this owned up to doing it. As the age of respondents increased, they were less likely to choose this as the most annoying behaviour, with a comparable increase in complaints about people putting their feet up on the seat.
Looking at phones was said to be the next most annoying (14%) with 10.19% of those who selected this as the most annoying behaviour themselves admitting to committing this crime.
Half of respondents have glared at an annoying audience member during a film. That’s a lot of people who have tried to use the power of their eyes to change someone else’s behaviour while basically sitting in the dark.
43% have shushed a fellow movie-goer, and 36% have said something to a fellow patron.
The biggest shushers are aged 36-45 (49.2%) and the this age group is also most likely to talk to another movie-goer about their annoying behaviour.
Under 18s are identified as the worst-behaved age group by all respondents (including themselves!).
Only 34% of under-18s think that audience behaviour is the cinema‘s responsibility. But 80.4% of them say that cinemas do enough to police audience behaviour. Not great when considering they self-identify as being badly behaved – they behave badly, but say it’s not the cinema‘s job to police. Could it be…. their own responsibility?!
55% of those overall who reckon it is the cinema‘s responsibility to deal with bad behaviour say cinemas don’t do enough about it. 45% of all respondents say cinemas don’t do enough about bad behaviour.
Every age demo over 26 (26-35, 36-45, 46-55, 56-65, 65+) self-identifies as the best behaved. This simply cannot be true and doesn’t make respondents look good.
Demos over 46 strongly dislike the behaviour of those under 35, grouping them as the worst-behaved audiences.
