In the past five months, my boyfriend, Keith, and I have seen just over 25 movies. That’s not just us sitting on the couch, swiping through Netflix. This is in theaters. Like, old school movie theaters, where thinking about a bucket of popcorn and a soda means also considering the theater’s financing options.
And we’re not rich, either. I mean, it is just the two of us, but when movie tickets cost around ten bucks a pop, things add up. We don’t even live in a place like New York City, where movies (I’ve heard) can be upwards of 15 dollars.
This is why MoviePass has been such a revelation.
For those who don’t know, MoviePass is a subscription service where you pay a $9.95 flat fee each month for a branded debit card that lets you see one movie a day. Using a smartphone app, you check into a theater for a specific film and then pay with your MoviePass card.
Aside from a few random instances where something misfires and you’re left standing at a self-serve kiosk looking like an idiot, the service works beautifully.
What’s great about MoviePass is that it really frees you up to see whatever films you want, and even the ones you don’t. As long as you have a theater nearby that takes the card (which you can see inside the app), all you have to do is drive to the theater, check in, and get your ticket. It would feel like sneaking in, but because you get a physical ticket, instead you feel like you’re committing petty larceny.
I can’t tell you what it would have taken to get me to drop ten bucks on a film like Winchester: The House That Ghosts Built. Sure, the movie has Helen Mirren, but it’s Helen Mirren at, like, 60 percent, wearing a black dress and veil and delivering lines like, “Thirteen nails seals [the ghosts] in!” and “The spirits. The spirits!” It’s obvious she’s just there for a kitchen renovation. Yet there we were, watching.
With MoviePass, there just wasn’t a good reason not to go see the film. So when Keith said that we might as well check it out, it would have taken more effort to protest than it did to just drive to the theater.
But the bad movies have so far been outweighed by good. The Post, The Shape of Water, Isle of Dogs—these are the films that really make MoviePass shine.
What worries me is MoviePass’s longevity.
On paper, the business plan sounds like something a madman put together. Even for someone like me who can barely do long division, the numbers don’t add up. In interviews, MoviePass’s CEO says that the company plans on selling the film and behavioral data it gets from customers, as well as revenue splits from concessions purchases. But I can’t help wondering, will that really outweigh the expense of providing each customer up to 30 movie tickets a month?
On a trip to Las Vegas, Keith and I were looking for something low-key to do on a Sunday evening. Tired of drinking tall cans of Heineken from any number of nearby Terrible’s off the Strip, we decided to pop in for a movie at a small local theater that happened to take MoviePass.
The only film we hadn’t seen was Geostorm, a sci-fi disaster flick starring Gerard Butler. The movie was at 7:00, but already tired after a long day of exploring the city, we sat down in the theater and promptly fell asleep after the opening credits.
Granted, the tickets cost less than $5 each—the movie’s previews were for films that I’m pretty sure had been released on DVD already—but still. If MoviePass is banking on delivering quality data about moviegoers and their habits, how accurate can it be when two customers get tickets for a random film that they care about less than the opportunity to take a nap?
Then again, I’m no data analytics person, and I have to assume that they’ve got somebody in MoviePass HQ who understands finances.
Keith and I plan on riding the MoviePass train as long as it will carry us. I’m not looking forward to a day when saying, “Hey, do you want to go see a movie?” entails checking my checking account or mulling what organ I could sell on the black market.
Until then, we’ll continue to go, sometimes arriving ten, fifteen minutes into a film, past the previews we’ve already seen a handful of times and often from the very same seats. We’ll get lost in the glow of the giant screen with a bucket of popcorn between us, and together, get away with what feels pretty close to theft.
