The joy of watching movies at home
The movie-watching experience is better from the comfort of your home than at the cinema
Art by Christina Tran.
I love watching Howl’s Moving Castle — the tumbling, rumbling fires, landscapes living beyond the screen, charming characters, with a sweet but impactful conclusion.
It was truly a beautiful movie and a magical experience — all from the comfort of my home.
A movie is a movie, but there is so much more you can gain from the way you watch one. Compared to watching at a cinema, watching a movie at home definitely has its benefits. I call it a trifecta of experience — choice, diversity, and comfort.
At home, there are endless choices regarding when, what, and how we watch a movie, meaning there is so much more freedom. If I wanted to watch Howl’s Moving Castle 20 years after its release, I can’t waltz into the nearest Cineplex, but I sure can pull it up on Netflix.
On my T.V. screen, laptop, or tablet, I can watch Howl’s Moving Castle, Spirited Away, heck even a movie with Hercule Poirot right away if I wanted.
Even the ability to pause, rewind, or skim portions as we like is unique to watching movies at home. We don’t have to worry about missing two major plot twists while we scramble to the bathroom. Instead, the movie will be perfectly paused on that freeze frame of Sophie Hatter’s shocked face.
Rewatching a movie, or half of it, is also a pleasure uniquely belonging to the home dweller’s movie experience.
The diversity of what we’re exposed to at home is far greater as the films range in language, nationality, genre, and medium. It isn’t limited to whatever companies think will be popular at the time.
All we have to do is log onto YouTube, Netflix, or Disney+, and voilà, there’s enough options to make your head spin. Amidst that overwhelming quantity, we often stumble upon the gems of film.
However, at the cinema, there is often a lower quality of diversity. If it’s a day where you want to watch something safe and comforting, sometimes you just can’t. Often, I have looked at the maybe 12 movies running at the cinema in a day, and liked none of them.
At home, there is no such forced choice between bad and meh. We can choose whether we want to watch something that fits our existing taste or take a chance on a random movie we’ve never heard of with little risk involved.
If we want to give a chance to the movie in a language and genre we’ve never experienced before, we can. Often, they are the ones that sow the greatest enrichment or spark the strongest obsessions.
Perhaps the only thing even greater than the joy of choice and diversity, is the sheer comfort of watching a movie at home. When we watch a movie at a cinema, really, we’re putting more into going out than we are watching the movie.
Going to the cinema also has the subtle pressure of a social activity. We typically go with a friend or date more to hang out with them than to truly enjoy the movie. Most of the time there’s the stress of what to wear, where to go, when to book tickets, and so on. There’s nothing wrong with a planned outing, however when the movie becomes secondary, our experience dampens.
Instead, we can just turn off our daily lives and park ourselves in front of the nearest device. Flip open that screen while cocooned in our fluffiest pyjamas, all comfy on the bed, and just watch. There is no need to stifle your laughter or pretend you’re not crying. You can feel the full range of emotions with no judgement. Even any company is at their most casual.
In the depths of your comfortable home, you can truly just experience a movie as it comes to life, eyes following the images across the screen, and ears sinking into the emotional beats. Your mind is pulled in, you’re immersed, and even after your device turns dark, the movie will linger.
