By George Haerle

For The Daily World

Every minute I sit in this theater, I get weaker. And every minute the people around me watch this movie, they get stronger. Each time I looked around, the walls moved in a little tighter. Everyone eventually gets what they want. I wanted a new movie review, and for my sins, they gave it to me.

“Skyscraper” comes at an interesting time in my life. I parted ways with a dead-end retail job a few weeks ago and have begun to transition to writing full-time, which has been absolutely great.

For those of you who have never worked retail, it can be a soul-crushing experience. Aside from operating a cash register, gathering carts and stocking shelves, verbal abuse by customers who are selfish, rude or downright cruel is a daily occurrence. So to not have to deal with these kinds of people has definitely given my psyche and mental health a much-needed break.

Then “Skyscraper” happened.

This is not so much a review of the film as it is a retelling of my experience seeing it. It’s a downright bad one anyway, starring Dwayne Johnson as a former FBI/Navy/Special Forces security analyst Will Sawyer, who takes on a European terrorist group hijacking a massive skyscraper that is also on fire, with his family inside.

Wait, this sounds familiar. That’s because, yes, “Skyscraper” is a clear ripoff of “Die Hard” (and “The Towering Inferno” at times). In fact, you could say it’s a Chinese knockoff, as it takes place in Hong Kong.

Only about a dozen or so others were in the theater, aside from myself and a friend. But these silhouettes of strangers would become dark representations of what the average audience member has become as the movie went on.

A few minutes into the movie, a guy comes in late, walking up the stairs with a large bag of popcorn and sitting a few seats away from me. Physically, there’s still plenty of space between us — but not enough for me not to hear the loudest, slobbering gnashing of teeth one could possibly make when stuffing massive handfuls of popcorn in their mouth.

He then starts making loud, simple-minded commentary on everything on screen with a bit of a countrified twang. This possibly amphetamine-driven creature goes on through the entire movie: “That’s a big building!” “That’s cool!” “Don’t go in there!” “That’s gotta hurt!” “That was a big explosion!” “Nice!”

But that’s not all. Three more strangers come in 20 minutes into the movie and sit near us. Then a fourth, in another nearby row. The trio continues to converse about the movie as it goes on, even louder than the guy next to me. Several times they cheer for a movie that is far from cheerworthy.

“Oh, he’s gonna use the crane to get into the building, that’s smart!” “I knew that was gonna happen!” “Yeah, get him!”

Another guy got up about eight times throughout the movie and shuffled into and out of the theater so many times I was wondering if he was checking on a puppy or something. The woman who had come in late by herself answered a phone call in the middle of the movie and had a conversation, with not even a whisper to her voice or a silenced phone. The loud chewing and commentary continued.

My friend and I began laughing hysterically while (spoiler alert) Dwayne Johnson uses a massive sword that was somehow hidden in his pants to slay a terrorist (a play on the duct-taped gun in “Die Hard”).

The movie would be downright unwatchable if it weren’t for its own over-the-top lunacy and Johnson’s charm. Also, the audience was a stark raving mad bunch of lunatic savages, and I was squirming in my seat from every outburst of absolute ridiculousness from either the audience or what’s happening on screen.

I’ve written about the audience problem before, to no avail. No matter how many strange and terrible people I escaped from at my former retail job, they will always be with me in the local movie theater. Those of humanity who indulge the worst parts of themselves with either complete ignorance or complete selfishness. Riverside Cinemas has become Kurtz’s compound.

It came upon me as all the chaos was happening: Nothing mattered. I reached for my front shirt pocket. … And I pulled out my phone to check Facebook. The very monster of movie theater etiquette I have always decried, I had become. The horror. The horror.

My friend and I continued to laugh throughout the movie. Hard. I’m not sure if it was the insanity of it all starting to take its toll, or that “Skyscraper” was actually in the so-bad-it’s-good territory. Probably a little bit from Column A, a bit from Column B.

The credits hit, we open the theater door, the light hits us, and a voice blurts out, “What the (expletive) was that?!” I laugh harder than I have in a very long time.

So yeah, I had a lot of fun. And that’s how I spent my summer vacation.

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“Skyscraper” is currently playing at the Riverside Cinemas, 1017 S. Boone St. in Aberdeen.

George Haerle holds a bachelor’s degree in creative writing for media and lives in Cosmopolis.