A film festival in Sweden will be sealing moviegoers inside coffins to give them an all-too real viewing experience.
The “sarcophagus screening,” in which eight volunteers will be shut into specially made caskets outfitted with screens, speakers, and air vents, will take place during the Jan. 27 viewing of sci-film Aniara at the Goteborg Film Festival in Sweden.
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The screening is meant to “enhance the bleak themes of the movie’s late-era capitalism dystopian setting,” according to festival director Jonas Holmberg, who spoke to The Hollywood Reporter.
Aniara, a Swedish-language apocalyptic sci-fi film, centers around a spaceship carrying consumption-obsessed passengers to Mars when it is knocked off course. The film serves as “a metaphor for Earth, that the future of our planet could be this kind of sarcophagus, floating alone through space as we use up our natural resources.”
According to Holmberg, the goal when designing the sarcophagus screening was to “find a way to take the experience of the film, and the apocalypse, further. To take the sense of aloneness and claustrophobia and strengthen it.”
“It’s an experiment,” he added. “At Goteborg we like to find new places and new ways to experience cinema. But we really have no idea how people will react.”
Having worked closely with the film’s directors, Pella Kagerman and Hugo Lilja, the film festival will offer 33 sarcophagus screenings of Aniara between Jan. 27 and Jan. 31. For those who are unable to handle the hour-and-46 minute experience, staff will be standing by throughout the film and each coffin is equipped with a red panic button.
Goteborg Film Festival’s sarcophagus screening will come just months after Six Flags amusement parks held a similar experience for a select number of attendees. In October, and in honor of all things Halloween, a Six Flags location in St. Louis prepped for its annual Fright Fest by locking six individuals in a 2-by-7-foot coffins for a total of 30 hours.
The Fright Fest 30-Hour Coffin Challenge, taking place on Oct. 13, allowed participants to take a six-minute bathroom break every hour, provided meals, drinks, snacks, and a phone charger, and allowed the coffin layers to bring a friend during park hours as they rested in the “slightly used” coffins.
As an incentive, the park offered each participant who completed the challenge $300, as well as a number of other prizes including two 2019 Gold Season Passes, a Fright Fest prize package, two VIP Haunted House passes, and a ticket for two to ride the Freak Train for Freak Unleashed.
