For years, we have feared that cinema might be dying. In 2026, Indians are in theatres once again. The only problem is that nobody seems to know how to behave in one. When I walked into my screening of Obsession and saw the fully packed room, a loud groan involuntarily escaped my mouth. I had specifically booked tickets for a Tuesday afternoon show to avoid the large crowds. I’d been hearing horror stories about wild, unruly audiences that were ruining the whole experience, and one look at the room told me I was about to suffer a similar fate.
The premise of Obsession is this: Nikki becomes non-consensually trapped in a romantic relationship with Bear after he makes a magic wish asking for her to love him more than anybody else in the whole world. The wish creates an unnatural version of her that is completely obsessed with him. Bear refuses to let go of this grotesque manifestation of his desires even after the real Nicky resurfaces, sobbing and begging him to end the relationship by killing her.
To me, the film was a scary and sad commentary on consent, incelhood, love and ownership. For my theatre audience, it was somehow the height of comedy. People erupted into laughter during scenes that were very obviously not funny, completely destroying the carefully built atmosphere. In fact, the raucous laughter gradually gave way to whispering, then loud commentary, and eventually full-blown conversations among groups. I have never ‘shhh-ed’ anyone more aggressively than I did during Obsession. By the time the credits rolled, what should have been a fun post-movie debrief instead became a sad discussion between my friends and me about somehow building our own private theatre where no one would jeer at a woman crying out in pain.
Just a few days earlier, at a screening of Hokum, the person sitting directly behind me had subjected the entire theatre to the incessant ringing of their phone, which buzzed at least six times. Midway through the film, I had to ask them to remove their unsocked feet from the headrest directly next to my sister’s head.
A true cinema experience these days isn’t complete without someone using their phone at full brightness, overworked PVR employees running helter-skelter with trays of snacks, large groups talking and bantering as though they’re in their living rooms, and—my personal favourite—people who arrive 20 minutes late, flailing their phones, flashlight on, trying to find their seats to no avail. To my relief, I wasn’t in the theatre when some guy decided to serenade his date by dancing in the aisle.
As a lover of film, I’m glad Indians are in theatres again. But part of me longs to be able to simply watch movies the way you’re supposed to. The problem with Indian audiences is that once they’ve paid for an experience, many feel entitled to behave however they please. That much-lamented “zero civic sense” has made its way into the cinema halls too.
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