Closing my eyes, covering my ears, and humming

I think I may have freaked out my friend when seeing Evil Dead Tuesday night.

The movie hadn't even started, and already I was showing signs of being possessed.

I can only imagine his thoughts as he first registered my behavior out of the corner of his eye. What would you think if your theater companion suddenly closed his eyes, covered his ears and started emanating a tuneless, demented hum? Whether or not he was actually rocking back and forth, you'd probably hallucinate it at this point.

Well, all I was really doing was trying to limit my exposure to the latest trailer for This is the End, the ensemble end-of-the-world comedy in which the stars you see in this poster play themselves, facing the apocalypse.

I don't usually go to such extreme lengths. It's usually too much trouble to prevent yourself from seeing trailers in the movie theater. Usually I just hope that the movies I really want to see are not the movies they've chosen to advertise.

But especially with a comedy, there's a very good chance that some of the best jokes will be spoiled in the trailer. And this is one of those movies where I want the best jokes to remain a surprise to me.

This is the End did it the right way by starting out with an excellent teaser trailer, in which five of the six people you see above (sorry Jay Baruchel) have a conversation on what I guess is the "morning after." Enough bad shit has already happened that they know Danny McBride shouldn't be wasting their food supplies on the lavish breakfast he's cooked up, but not so much that their world has been torn asunder (though they do say that Michael Cera has already died, and that this could be a benefit of the apocalypse). It's a funny scene, and I kind of suspect it's not actually in the movie. This two-minute bit is followed by maybe 30 seconds of images that I do expect to actually be in the movie.

However, I could tell that this was a new trailer that was intent on showing me a lot more. So I decided, then and there, that I needed to use whatever means were at my disposal to prevent it from reaching my eyes and ears.

Fortunately, I did have the presence of mind to immediately snap out of it once the sounds of the trailer stopped, and to immediately explain to my friend what I'd been doing. However, that meant that for the length of your average trailer, he thought his friend might have just had a psychotic break with reality, and he probably spent a good 30 seconds debating what his next move should be.

Next time, I think I'll only try to create a personal sensory deprivation chamber when I'm alone at the movies.