A Swedish Movie Festival Will Lock Audience Members In Coffins, Calling It the 'World’s Most Claustrophobic Cinema'
Sweden’s Göteborg Film Festival has, since its inception in 1979, grown into Scandinavia’s largest film event. The organizers, however, apparently feel there aren’t nearly enough lunatics attending, as they’ve decided to hold “an extremely intimate screening” inside a god dang coffin.
Touting it in a press release as “the world’s most claustrophobic cinema,” the festival will lock—yes, they say lock—viewers inside a “custom-made sarcophagus” for a screening of Pella Kagerman and Hugo Lilja’s new film, Aniara. Sure, the air will thin out and you’ll probably begin panicking once the walls start closing in, but, hey, at least you won’t be able to see the guy texting in the next coffin over.
I like to live my life under one strong assumption: when you find yourself trapped inside an enclosed-locked coffin, you are not getting out. Most of the time in this situations you are dead so you’re kind of out of options. In others rare situations, you are probably being left for dead like in Kill Bill (except you aren’t punching your way out). Willingly going into a coffin is a death wish. There was a fraternity at Cuse that would lock you in one for three hours without a phone or anything. Yeah, no thanks. Now there’s this Swedish movie festival that thinks it’s a swell idea to watch movies this way. This looks just dandy doesn’t it?
My local movie theater was one of the first to adopt the super comfy leather recliners and it honestly changed how I went to the ole’ cinema. I could never go back to the normal seats once I sat in those and put up my feet. Now we’re talking coffins? I think I would go about seven minutes before having a full-on panic attack, and that might be generous. What if you have to pee? These things are locked shut. You’re fucked. You have to be sick in the head to do this. Maybe they’re trying to bait psychopaths into doing this and then just put them in mental institutions right after? I could see Francis taking a girl on a first date here. Have his dad fly them overseas just to sit inside a coffin in Sweden with nowhere to go. I feel like there’s a Black Mirror episode sitting here ready to be unleashed. Some kind of social experiment. Whatever it is I couldn’t be more out. How much would you have to be paid to do this for let’s say two hours without a phone? At least $5,000 cash and I might need more. I’m officially out on coffins.