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THE music score dips into an edgy, creepy note.
I sit still, not daring to breathe; trying hard to keep my hand steady so that my popcorn doesn't rustle.
'Don't go in there', my mind screams. But the protagonists never learn, do they?
His sweaty palm turns the knob and the door eerily creaks open.
There is a frantic scream and a rush of steel ... "And, guess what happened last weekend?"
My heart drops back into place as I jerk around in exaspertation. Someone is on their mobile phone, yakking away as the movie is playing. I grit my teeth, furiously and try to ignore the constant babble.
The movie continues and I watch, absorbed in the intense flick. The scene shifts and a rather gruesome clip adds to the plot. As if on cue, a baby wails, loud and shrill, somewhere from the middle of the last row.
I grit my teeth again, my hands at my temples, in agony.
The lady next to me, accompanied by all her children, adds to the chatter by leaning over to them every five minutes to explain what's happening on screen and telling them 'when not to look'.
I give up trying to see the movie and look at my watch, counting the minutes until the end of the show.
I come out from the theatre, drained, with a splitting headache from the baby's crying, and having heard half the dialogue, left with no interest in a perfectly good, gripping film.
When I go for a movie, armed with a customary bucket of popcorn, I go to unwind; to lose myself in a well-spun, expertly choreographed story.
It can be very frustrating when you end up sitting next to mobile-phone chatters and restless toddlers. The most frustrating thing, however, is that they aren't supposed to be there in the first place.
Talking on the phone is prohibited in theatres, and movie ratings are there for reasons. Bringing a toddler to a NK-15 (No kid under 15) movie is unlawful and morally wrong. The age inappropriate exposure can have long lasting psychological effects and neither is it a sign of good parenting.
Toddlers have their own movies - ones that don't make them howl with horror or shut their eyes, screaming in terror.
In America, for example, movie theatres have strict age policies that require movie-goers to produce an ID before being admitted into a cinema. The policy ensures that the right people see the right movies - something Bahrain could and should implement.
Mobile phone users could also do everyone a favour by tucking their devices into their pockets for a few hours.
We came to watch a movie, not to hear what dress your friend wore last week. It is impolite to talk during a film - something some of my fellow movie-goers expressed explicitly by hissing angrily at the talking lady in the front row.
Movies are supposed to be a brief time of relaxation, to scamper into another world without a worry for just a few hours - not another medium for stress.
So, please think the next time you whip out a phone during the middle of a film or take your underage children to a movie.
You wouldn't want to be pelted with popcorn kernels, would you?
Editor's note: Sangeetha, you didn't miss much, if you were watching the same movie as the one Charlie Holding reviewed! See Film Weekly.
