Straight-to-steaming movies are a dime a dozen nowadays, a trend that has given rise to a more novel phenomenon:

New movies consciously designed never to be watched at home, only ever available in theaters.

Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Memoria and Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Chime are two recent entries in this burgeoned genre, and both are about characters haunted by vague noises…

Which seems related to their theaters-only mandate.

While the differences from streaming usually focus on screen size, Memoria and Chime utilize the fact that their audiences cannot control the viewing conditions. At home, you could pause and/or turn up the volume when a sound seems to be plaguing the characters, to decipher what exactly they — and we — might be hearing, if anything.

But in a theater, it’s impossible to tell if the aural wisps are coming from the speakers, or neighboring auditoriums, or the hallways and lobbies, or outside the building, or the recesses of our imaginations. We’re beset by undefinable reverberations and forever deprived of any power to seek clarification…

Which is the explicit plot of both movies.