Let’s say you’re watching a horror movie at a crowded theatre. Would you prefer to be watching with an audience that screams and yells at the action? Would you prefer to watch with everyone else being quiet? I think it adds to the atmosphere when people in the theatre are screaming, telling the person on screen not to open the closet door, etc. what do you all think? Edited to add the following. When I ask about a loud audience, I mean yelling at the onscreen characters, screaming at the scary parts, etc. I don’t mean people talking loudly about what they did earlier in the day or some other random topic.
Loud, if that meant screaming at the scary parts. Talking to the characters onscreen? No. Hell no.
This farting texter is ok with either crowd.
I was a teenager during the 1980s slasher/horror movie golden era and I used to drag my friends up to the 16th Street Theater in Lauderhill, FL to watch movies specifically because the audience would yell and scream at the movie. I remember during A Nightmare on Elm Street one guy stood up and yelled “What the fuck you wanna open that door for? Are you CRAZY???” and it brought the house down right before we all screamed at was behind the door.
Good times!
Off the top of my head, I think it would depend on what kind of horror movie it is. For a “ghost story” type of movie, that depends on atmosphere and spookiness, I’d want a quiet audience. For the “slasher film” type of movie, with lots of on-screen violence, a loud audience would be better, since that’s one type of movie where being reminded that it’s just a movie and not to take it too seriously would actually help my enjoyment.
A loud one, preferably one full of black people.
That was the 16th Street Theater back in the day. 
With any movie, I would prefer to be the only one watching it. That would be a little expensive on a big screen so I put up with crowds, but the idea is to forget that they exist.
It’s one reason I do almost all my movie-watching these days in a theater that serves alcohol and therefore does not allow anyone under 21.
I do not go to first run movies anymore precisly for the reason that I cannot stand other people making noise, whether it’s screaming, talking, crunching on fucking popcorn…Urge to kill…rising!
HOWEVER, if there is a screening of an old classic that everyone has already seen dozens of times, then I can go along with some gentle conversation and/or mockery…
Best time I ever had at a movie theatre was watching a William Castle Psycho knockoff with a very enthusiastic audience. Bad horror, slasher horror, let the audience have fun. Ghost story like The Others, they better be quiet.
ehh I live with the first type at home so wouldn’t matter to me but what gets me is people think its ok to take their under 12 child to see a slasher film …
When I went and seen the first childs play movie which was one of the few horror movies I like the fact that a lady brought an 7 or 8 year old in with her that got more comments that the movie did …
But horrro movie fans are funny to watch because even tho they’ve seen all the tropes 50 gazillion times they still ask why did the black guy who died first opened the door or try to warn him …
wow I do wanna go see rocky horror at least once with the crowds … but people do that at all revivals like sound of music and the like …
This, exactly. If it’s a “creeped out” kind of movie, then quiet. But campy? Definitely loud.
I wish everyone was pin-drop quiet at “Ricky Horror Picture Show” showings.
Even if anyone tried standing, that would be an immediate life ban from that theatre.
Also a “clothing limit” could be observed. I don’t know how, but have some kind of textile parameters that won’t have the odious sledgehammer air of fascism…something Bostwick-approved. Or Meatloaf could…(ahem, sorry) - weigh in on this?
Reacting to the action on screen?
Fine.
Loudly telling the person they’re with what’s going to happen, because they’ve already seen it (which happened at the last horror movie I saw in theatre)?
FUCK NO.
If the movie was enjoyable in and of itself, I could tolerate some audience noise. My counter-experience is being bored at 28 Days Later and unfortunately sitting near some imbecile woman who SHRIEKED anytime something even mildly startling occurred.
In 1980, I was trying to enjoy Friday the 13th and some wiener I was with - Allen Jacobsen - (yes I’ll say his actual name - I’m still that pissed off with him) would elbow me just before all the scary moments, and when he elbowed me for the moldy kid coming out of the water at the end, I might have written him off for a bit.
Allen, that is.
Mentioned in a thread elsewhere about watching “Wait Until Dark” in a sort of rep cinema theatre in '78. When Alan Arkin suddenly lurches out, airborne, at Audrey Hepburn, right near the end, I don’t think I’ll ever hear collective screaming again like I did in this good-sized audience I was in, and if I do, it better be in an entertainment context. Never has a harp sounded scarier. (or maybe it’s Mancini strumming away at the piano strings…At other points, his off-kilter, de-tuned piano ramblings are eerie in a meandering, unsure-what’s-next queasiness kinda way, making it one of my fave film scores).
The volume from the audience’s roar of rising-upwards pandemonium from the A.L.M. (Arkin Lurch Moment) was easily one of my most thrilling movie-going experiences.
Ben Gardener’s head in Jaws got a close second.