Today was the third time I walked out of a screening at the movie theatre Pathé Schouwburgplein. I’ve visited that theatre four times in total, so that makes for a rather disgraceful score overall. Normally I enjoy going to your franchise, but the focus on selling tickets instead of delivering a movie experience at Schouwburgplein is appalling at best.

Your camel was limping and in pain already, but you’ve stacked the final straw during X-Men: First Class on June 6th. It wasn’t because of the failing projection of that screening per se. After some complaints the film was reset to the beginning. By then the movie was only ten minutes underway, so of course you are forgiven. It wasn’t the lack of hygiene in the theatre either. After all, popcorn is easily swept from a chair and we just replaced the empty beer bottles left in the cup holders with our own drinks. Who are we to complain about your messy cinema anyway, it’s not like your tickets are absurdly overpriced. Why didn’t you ask us to clean the toilets too while we were at it? Scrubbing the skid marks off your crappers was the only logical follow up, right?

The real agony was a bright light that came from a lamp near the entrance. It was an emergency light, but in fact also a projector. Apparently you have designed that particular screening room of your theatre in such a way that the emergency light shines RIGHT ON THE FUCKING SCREEN. Every time the film went dark, not per se black but just dark, that light blocked about twenty percent of the screen. How do you expect us to enjoy the X-Men if a blind spot is distracting me from looking at Mystique’s blue… arms?

Flabbergasted about this seemingly appropriate way of screening a movie I made a complaint. Your kind but somewhat agitated employee told me that I certainly wasn’t the first one to notice the particular light. So, good, I wasn’t the first one to notice a HUGE FUCKING WHITE SPOT ON THE SCREEN. Really? The employee said that she was very sorry indeed. Then again, she couldn’t do anything about it. Regulation made it mandatory for it to keep shining near the entrance.

So let me get this straight: people complain because you have designed your theatre in the shittiest way possible. You react by saying that you are sorry that you keep on selling highly priced tickets to a faulty cinema hall, over and over again. That’s like when a chef leaves a steamy wad of shit sauce on my steak whilst saying that he is sorry but if he had removed it his hands would have gotten dirty. And it is mandatory that he keeps his hands clean at all times, he is a chef for god’s sake! And now pay up you cheap bastard!

I am at a loss why people keep returning to your cinema. You acknowledge a problem that ruins the experience but at the same time you refuse to do anything about that. Even worse, you keep on duping people into buying tickets to a shitty screening. Although I received a refund, I did have to travel across town to another Pathé franchise because I really wanted to see X-Men. Through Rotterdam public transportation, which I survived. X-Men was an excellent movie by the way. But not thanks to you. Your cinema sucks.