University students and Middletown residents can no longer walk down Main Street to watch the year’s Oscar-nominated films or the newest James Bond, as neighborhood staple Metro Movies 12 bid goodbye to the town on Monday, Jan. 5, without any publicized cause for the closure.
Theatergoers were informed of the unexpected closure via a short announcement posted to the Metro Movies 12 website, Instagram, and Facebook accounts. Notably, there was no mention of refunds for ticket holders.
“Metro Movies 12 is closed,” the post wrote. “Thank you to our incredible community for years of movie memories.”
Originally Destinta Theatres, Metro Movies 12 opened in 1999 at 140 Main St. in the Metro Square Shopping Center. A 2012 renovation brought changes to the theater, including a new digital projector and an updated look.
“Even fans of the older 35mm format can agree that if there was one place that needed a change, it was Destinta,” said a 2012 review of the renovation published in The Argus. Since then, however, Metro Movies 12 has been a gathering place for students looking to watch the latest blockbuster or indie drama.
Customers weren’t the only ones surprised by the closure. According to an investigation by The Middletown Press, employees were not warned of the impending closure.
Although Metro Movies did not provide a reason for their closure, Vice Chair of Film Studies Michael Slowik ’03 reflected on the attendance and revenue struggles experienced by movie theaters around the country.
“Even before the pandemic, studios were reducing the number of films they were making each year, and audiences have yet to return to the movies in numbers matching pre-pandemic levels,” Slowik wrote in an email to The Argus. “If you own a multiplex, you reach a point where you worry that you simply aren’t receiving enough product to keep your doors open. I hope this situation changes because the movie theater, to me, is still the best way to watch a film, but we’ll see.”
Slowik noted that he enjoyed going to Metro Movies during his time as an undergraduate student at the University.
“It was an easy walk from campus, and it’s where I saw, among other things, ‘Magnolia,’ the movie that more than any other made me want to study films professionally,” Slowik wrote. “So, I’m sad to learn that it’s closing.”
Sam Birtwistle ’28, Campus Ambassador for the film production company NEON, was also not surprised by the theater’s closure. Birtwistle noted low projection standards and higher prices compared to the University’s on-campus theater, the Goldsmith Family Cinema.
“Everything about the Goldsmith is a really good experience,” Birtwistle said. “I think that drew people away, especially during colder months, [from Metro].”
Some students were hit particularly hard by the loss, including film major Gryphon Magnus ’28. Visiting the theater 32 times in his three semesters at the University, Magnus started a social media series to review his visits and rate each auditorium in the theater complex.
“There’s just this special, homemade quality of a place like [Metro Movies], which is independently run,” Magnus said. “It feels more personal. I think you could see the detractive downsides of that in the theater quality sometimes, but I’m willing to make that exchange for that feeling.”
It remains unclear what will become of the place that was once a Middletown staple.
Anabel Goode can be reached at agoode@wesleyan.edu.
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