novelraw Chapter 380 380: Reviews(2)
Chapter 380 380: Reviews(2)
….
Laurence, meanwhile, had been down his own rabbit hole.
While Noel processed the film through pen and paper - Laurence did what he always did after a film hit him in a way he wasn't prepared for: he went looking for proof that he wasn't alone in it.
So he opened his laptop, typed the title into every platform he could think of, and started reading.
And within minutes, he realized something.
The internet was on fire.
He scrolled through for straight thirty minutes, and couldn't help himself.
"Noel."
Noel didn't look up from his notebook. "Mm."
"Get your ass over here right now and hear this…"
"I am writing."
"You can write later, fucker - first, listen."
Noel set his pen down, and immediately Laurence cleared his throat and read the first one aloud.
===
"I went into this movie with my girlfriend because she wanted to watch it. I didn't even know what it was about. I just thought the title was weird. I am now sitting in my car in the cinema parking lot writing this because I physically cannot drive. My hands won't stop shaking. I am a thirty-six-year-old man and I have been crying for twenty minutes. What the hell did Regal Seraphsail do to me."
===
Noel exhaled something that was half a laugh and half a sigh. "Yeah. That sounds about right."
Laurence was already scrolling to the next one.
===
"The fact that this film tells you she dies in the FIRST SCENE and then still makes you believe she won't is actually criminal. That should not be possible. I am pressing charges."
===
Noel actually smiled at that one. "They're not wrong."
"Wait, wait… this one!" Laurence said, leaning closer to the screen. "This one's from a critic."
===
"Regal Seraphsail has, for the better part of a decade, built his reputation on narrative complexity - on films that challenge, provoke, and demand intellectual participation from their audiences.
With [I Want to Eat Your Pancreas], he proves something far more difficult: that he can be simple. That he can strip away every structural trick in his arsenal and rely on nothing but two people, a ticking clock, and the most fundamental question storytelling has ever asked - what does it mean to be alive when you know it's ending? The result is not just his most accessible film. It is his best."
===
The room went quiet for a moment after that one.
"Keep scrolling dude." Noel said.
Laurence asked. "Don't you want to write something?"
"Shit the fuck up and let your hand do it's thing."
Laurence didn't need to be told twice.
===
"I have never in my life wanted a fictional character to live more than I wanted Sakura Yamauchi to live. And I KNEW. I knew from the first minute. I knew the entire time. And I still begged."
"The end-credits song should be classified as a war crime under the Geneva Convention."
===
Laurence let out a breath that was almost a laugh. "Hha, they are funny."
"For real man. It's like they are complaining because the film was too good."
"You said it."
They shared a grin - the easy, worn-in kind that only came from years of watching films together and knowing, without having to explain, exactly what the other person was feeling.
What neither Noel nor Laurence knew at that moment - was that these kinds of reviews were only the beginning.
Post after post, thread after thread, video essay after video essay, each one trying to articulate the same inarticulable thing, each one failing in slightly different and deeply human ways.
The kind of collective, uncoordinated emotional response that doesn't just accompany a successful film - it marks the birth of a cultural phenomenon.
And it didn't take too long for people to start to notice them.
…..
[After A Week]
The first cultural side effects was something that can be classified as the 'strangest' of the decade in Hollywood.
It was called the Tissue Crisis.
Movie theatres across the country reported something unprecedented: concession stands ran out of napkins.
Not popcorn or soda, but - Napkins.
Audiences were taking handfuls of concession napkins into the theatre as makeshift tissues.
Within 48 hours, AMC Theatres issued a corporate-level directive - the first of its kind in the chain's history - to increase napkin supply at all locations screening the film by 300%.
And even more bizarre was - Buffer Time.
Multiple theatre chains independently arrived at the same solution: they began adding a five-to-ten-minute buffer between screenings of the film.
No trailers for the next showing, advertisements, but just dim lights and soft ambient music - a recovery period.
An AMC manager in Brooklyn explained it to a New York Post reporter:
"Normally, we turn rooms in eight minutes. For this film, we tried that on Friday afternoon. The 4:00 PM audience was still... processing... when the 6:30 PM audience started filing in. People were walking into a room full of crying strangers. It was chaos... In the most beautiful way. So we added a buffer."
….
The film was also bombarded with one of the most positive reviews Regal had ever received. It was mostly unanimous, except for the obvious paid ones, which everybody ignored:
[The Hollywood Reporter: "Seraphsail's quietest film is, paradoxically, the one that screams the loudest."]
[Variety: "A masterclass in emotional architecture. Every single brick is placed with intention, and the whole building collapses on you exactly when it's supposed to."]
[Empire Magazine: "The rare film that tells you exactly how it ends and still finds a way to devastate you. Structurally audacious. Emotionally merciless."]
[Screen Daily: "Seraphsail trades his usual complexity for clarity, and the result is the most emotionally precise film of the year."]
….
While the critics had spoken elegantly and precisely, with respectful praise and carefully constructed metaphors about impermanence and the human condition.
The people, however, did not have time for metaphors.
The people had just been emotionally mugged by a movie about a pancreas, and they had feelings about it, and those feelings were coming out raw, profane, unfiltered, and at extremely high volume across every social media platform simultaneously.
What follows is the truest record of what America said when the lights came up.
….
[Twitter | Friday Night (Second Weekend)]
| @DannyMcGuire_88: "WHUT THE FUCK. WHO MADE THIS TRAUMATIC SHIT. I need their name. I need their ADDRESS. Not to hurt them. To ask them why they did this to me. I was FINE before this movie. I had PLANS tonight. Those plans are CANCELLED. I am sitting in a Wendy's parking lot crying into a Frosty. This was supposed to be DATE NIGHT."
| @beccaaaaa_with5as: "I think the director has some SERIOUS issues with her love life. He should consider a therapist. Or prison. What he did to me in that theatre is a CRIME. I am pressing charges. Emotional assault in the first degree."
| @TylerJ_NoFilter: "bro I'm a 6'4 former linebacker and I just cried so hard in a movie theatre that the woman next to me offered me her inhaler. AN INHALER. She thought I was having a medical event. I was. It's called I WANT TO EAT YOUR PANCREAS and it should be classified as a biological weapon."
| @mamabear_karen52: "Took my husband to this movie for date night. He hasn't spoken in 45 minutes. He's just sitting in the car staring at the steering wheel. I asked if he was okay. He said 'I need to call my brother.' His brother died in 2019. I don't know what to do. I think this movie broke my husband."
|| [Update, 2 hours later]: "He's okay. He cried for twenty minutes in the driveway. Then he came inside and hugged our son for so long that our son asked if someone died. He said 'Not tonight.' I still don't fully understand what happened but we're okay. Damn this movie."
| @chrisP_bacon: "I went to this movie alone because I have no friends. I left this movie understanding WHY I have no friends. This film is a personal attack disguised as entertainment. 11/10 will never recover."
| @jasmineeeee_xo: "THE WAFFLE SCENE. THE FUCKING WAFFLE SCENE. I WILL NEVER EAT A WAFFLE AGAIN WITHOUT CRYING. THIS DIRECTOR HAS RUINED WAFFLES FOR ME. WAFFLES. AN INNOCENT BREAKFAST FOOD. WHAT KIND OF MONSTER WEAPONIZES BREAKFAST."
| @Big_Ron_Energy: "My girlfriend is sobbing in the passenger seat. I'm sobbing in the driver's seat. Neither of us can see well enough to drive. We've been in this parking garage for 30 minutes. If we die here, tell our families it was the pancreas movie."
@prof_david_lin: "I have a PhD in Comparative Literature. I have read Tolstoy and Dostoevsky and Proust and Camus. I have engaged with the deepest expressions of human suffering across six languages and four centuries. I was not prepared for this film. A 22-year-old actress eating a waffle destroyed me more thoroughly than the entire Russian literary canon. I need to reevaluate my life."
====
At approximately 10:47 PM Eastern on opening night, a user named @MovieGremlin_Kat posted a tweet that would, within hours, become one of the most viral tweets of the year:
| @MovieGremlin_Kat: "Just walked out of the 7:30 at Regal Union Square. EVERY SINGLE PERSON in the theatre was crying. The staff was crying. A JANITOR was crying. He was mopping the floor and WEEPING. The mop was just going in circles because he couldn't see. Regal does not pay this man enough to clean up after emotional terrorism. #RegalNeedsTherapy"
===
The hashtag #RegalNeedsTherapy detonated.
Within two hours, it was the number one trending topic in the United States. Within four hours, it was trending globally. Within twenty-four hours, it had been used in over 1.2 million posts.
The posts under the hashtag were extraordinary - not because they were polished or poetic, but because they were unhinged in the most human way possible:
| @alexis_not_texas: "The guy next to me at AMC Burbank was eating nachos during the first half. By the end he was holding the nacho tray against his chest like a teddy bear and rocking. Sir. SIR. The nachos are not going to help. #RegalNeedsTherapy"
| @uncle_jimbo_real: "I am a 58 year old man. I have been to war. ACTUAL war. I just cried harder at this movie than I cried at anything in my entire life including the war. My wife is looking at me like she's never met me before. She might be right. I don't think I'm the same person who walked into that theatre. #RegalNeedsTherapy"
| @tina_from_hr: "It's not just Regal. It's ALL of them. I work at Cinemark. I've had to console FOUR separate audience members in the lobby tonight. One of them grabbed my arm and said 'Why didn't anyone WARN us?' Ma'am. The title of the movie is I WANT TO EAT YOUR PANCREAS. What did you think was going to happen. A comedy?? #RegalNeedsTherapy"
| @mattdoesthings: "I went to the 10pm showing with the boys. The BOYS. We were going to go to a bar after. We did not go to a bar after. We are in Jake's apartment in complete silence. Nobody has spoken in 20 minutes. Jake is making tea. JAKE DOES NOT DRINK TEA. This movie changed Jake on a molecular level. #RegalNeedsTherapy"
| @aisha_b_writing: "My therapist told me to 'lean into my emotions this week.' Ma'am. MA'AM. I did not lean. I was PUSHED. Off a CLIFF. Into a CANYON of feelings. I will be sending her the receipt for this movie ticket along with my emotional damages claim. #RegalNeedsTherapy"
| @brad_the_dad_pod: "I coach my son's little league team. I have yelled at umpires. I have argued about the infield fly rule. I am a man's man doing man things. I just called my mom from the theatre bathroom to tell her I love her and she asked me if I was drunk. I'M NOT DRUNK MOM. I'M PANCREASED. #RegalNeedsTherapy"
===
Not everyone was sad. Some people were furious.
Not at the film's quality - almost no one argued it was bad. They were furious at the film for what it had done to them without their consent. They felt ambushed. Emotionally mugged. They had walked into a theatre expecting entertainment and had received, instead, an existential crisis.
===
@vanessa_says_no: "I need everyone to understand that I DID NOT AGREE TO THIS. I bought a movie ticket. A MOVIE TICKET. I did not sign a waiver. I did not consent to having my entire emotional infrastructure dismantled by a girl eating off someone else's plate. There should be a WARNING. Like on roller coasters. 'You must be THIS emotionally stable to ride this attraction.' I was NOT this emotionally stable. I want a REFUND. Not for the ticket. For my FEELINGS."
@steve_o_not_that_one: "The AUDACITY of this director. The absolute AUDACITY. He sat in a room and thought 'I'm going to make a movie that destroys every person who watches it' and then he DID it and now he's probably somewhere drinking wine and being FINE while the rest of us are SHATTERED. This is class warfare. The director class vs. the audience class. We are the proletariat of pain."
@lisa_m_actual: "My mascara is on my NECK. Not my cheeks. My NECK. Do you understand the VOLUME of tears required for mascara to migrate from eyes to neck? This is not crying. This is a FLOOD EVENT. FEMA should be involved."
….
.
[To be continued…]
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