Spoilers!

I have a heard a lot of talk recently on the subject of spoilers and the impact they have on the enjoyment of spoilable media. I thought I’d take some time to lay out what I aim to do at this site and where I sit on the matter.

The main discussion is as to whether a spoiler Is actually what it’s title makes it out to be. There is some research that suggests knowing the outcome of a story actually heightens the enjoyment of the ride, taking away the mystery and letting the audience appreciate all the minutiae of details that lead up to that point. Personally, although I can see the appeal of this, I disagree… To an extent.

There is nothing quite like the experience of watching a film for the first time. That feeling of discovery and completion when the final credits roll in front of you for the first time can only be felt once per film, and it is something special. If it's good enough then watching it again can reveal the little details which stack up to an exciting ending, adding yet more to the experience you enjoyed the first time round. Most recently I found myself watching low budget found-footage horror The Borderlands twice in quite quick succession. The ending the first time blew me away and I have no doubt that my opinion of the film would have remained the same if I had known the ending prior to my first watch, but I would never have had that enthralling moment when I literally sat up in my seat and leant towards the screen to try and figure out what I’d just seen. In contrast I listened to a podcast which gave away the ending of The Sacrament. Even though I still loved the film, I feel like I lost an opportunity to really experience the narrative as it unfolded. There was a constant voice in my head waiting for the final scene to play out and hoping there was still more to come.

As such, on this site I will try my best to make reviews a spoiler free zone. The purpose of a review is to inform a viewer as to whether a film is worth seeing in the first place, it is a chance to pass on your opinion about the film's merits. It’s not a critics right to be the only person to have that first-watch experience. So, in reviews on this site plot points will be kept down to a bare minimum, with a few cryptic mentions of the odd stand-out moment. Features on the other hand may well be full of spoilers, but I’ll be sure to mention it somewhere in the opening paragraph.

Context counts for a lot, and even the most well-known of plot twists are still unknown to some people. I’m even reluctant to make a joke about Bruce Willis in The Sixth Sense or Brad Pitt in Fight Club, everything is new to someone once. There will even be a generation who don’t know about Darth Vader’s family tree or what Soylent Green is made from. The discussion of which and/or when plot twists become common knowledge is much to detailed to get into here though.

In brief, reviews on this site will be spoiler-free although features may not (Bruce Willis is a sled, Rosebud was Charles Foster Kane’s father and Keyser Soze is a ghost).