Sneaking into a R-rated movie

May 21, 2019 — by Angelina Chen and Amanda Zhu

Two 15-year-old reporters try and sneak into an R-rated movie with food from home.

No texting. No talking. No outside food. No children under 17 allowed in R-rated movies unless accompanied by a parent.

These are all rules of AMC Theatres and many other cinemas … and we successfully broke two of them — though it was hardly worth it.

We wanted to see how difficult it would be to get into an R-rated movie underaged, so we took it upon ourselves to find out. Our first task was to sneak into an R-rated movie without a parent or guardian.

We selected the movie “Us” to watch because it seemed intriguing, but not too bloody: the storyline was more of a psychological thriller, rather than a gruesome horror movie. It also had a 94 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes and an 81 percent rating on Metacritic.

As we approached the AMC 14 ticket booth, we tried to look older by standing up straighter and wearing sunglasses in the rare chance that we would be allowed to buy tickets without question. Unfortunately, the ticket employee did not even look at us, before immediately asking to see our ID’s when we said we wanted to watch the movie.

Our backup plan was just to pretend that we had no idea “Us” was an R-rated movie. Since we had been caught, we feigned innocence and told the employee we had decided to just watch “Captain Marvel,” a movie rated PG-13, instead.

When we got into the theater, it was time for our second task. We bought a party-sized bag of Hot Cheetos and a bag of Sour Patch Kids, bundled them in a blanket and brought them into the theater without being stopped.

We thought we were lucky because the room playing “Us” was right next to the room showing “Captain Marvel,” so it would be relatively easy to sneak in. As soon as we thought the single staff member standing by the doors wasn’t looking, we quickly snuck in.

However, to our disappointment, there were three other employees watching us, so we were stopped as soon as we sat down. When the worker asked to see our tickets, we reluctantly handed him the two “Captain Marvel” tickets, and he informed us that we were in the wrong room.

It was time to play the innocent card again. We laughed good-heartedly, apologized profusely, and followed him out.

We went to our assigned seats in the “Captain Marvel” room and thought about what to do next. We thought to give sneaking in another shot, so we left the room and went back out to the lobby.

To avoid the suspicion of any potential employee onlookers, we pretended to be on a phone call. This also would have given us a reason to have left the movie.

After waiting for over 15 minutes and constantly checking our surroundings, we finally saw our opportunity to rush into the “Us” showing again. We quickly ran in and sat in the seats in the very back so that it would be harder for security to find us. Success! (Sort of.)

Throughout the entire movie, we sat in fear, not only from the film itself, but also from the fear of being caught breaking the rules. We quietly finished stress-eating our entire bag of chips and most of the Sour Patch we snuck in.

Once the movie ended, we quickly left with the rest of the viewers to avoid being caught. As we walked out, the employee that caught us the first time walked in at the exact time. Just our luck.

He didn’t say anything, only giving us a long, hard and suspicious glare.

“Us” was R-rated because it contained violence and thrilling elements, but for us, the real scare was sneaking in and out of the movie theater without being caught. Although we had lots of fun, it would have been much easier to be 18 and not have to deal with the hassle of sneaking in and out for a movie that we are clearly mature enough to handle.

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