You Can Soon Watch ‘It Ends’ In Theaters with a Synchronized Director’s Commentary

Neon is doing something a little different for the theatrical run of Alexander Ullom‘s debut horror feature, It Ends. Frankly, I’m not sure I like it.

Beginning August 28th in participating theaters, audiences will be able to hear the director along with producers Carrie Carusone and Evan Barber with a synchronized commentary during It Ends in theaters.

Dubbed “the Director’s Experience”, the Neon and TheaterEars, Inc. partnership will allow audiences to tune into the synchronized commentary through TheaterEars’ app on their phone with a pair of headphones.

Here’s how it works, according to the release: “Moviegoers download the free TheaterEars app, select It Ends and their showtime to get the track on their phone, then press play when the movie starts. The app synchronizes the filmmakers’ commentary to the projected film and works across all formats including RealD and 4DX.

The app is free to download from the App Store and Google Play and is free to use (ad-supported) for the Director’s Experience during any standard showtime at participating locations, providing the moviegoer with premium audio experience without an additional ticket upcharge.”

So, basically, that means everyone on their phones, listening to audio through their phone instead of the theater’s speakers. Thanks, but no thanks. Not my cup of tea. If that’s yours, though, then this may be a worthwhile experiment that will, at the very least, give good background on the movie through the commentary.

Said Dan Mangru, Founder & CEO, TheaterEars, “Commentary tracks have always arrived after the fact, months later, on a disc or a stream, to an audience that has already moved on. It Ends is a film built out of conversation, and Alex is a filmmaker whose audience found him online and then showed up in theaters. Putting his voice in that room, while the film is still on screens, is exactly the thing we built this for.”

Added Ullom, “I made a movie that takes place almost entirely inside a car, so I spent a year thinking about what four people say to each other and what they don’t. Getting to sit next to an audience while they watch it and tell them what we were actually doing — in a theater, while it’s still in theaters — is not something I thought was possible when we were shooting this in twenty days.”