Situated on a tree-lined roundabout, just across from the western entrance to the New York City park system’s crown jewel, Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, the Pavilion Park Slope movie theater began screening movies to the residents of Park Slope, Windsor Terrace and Greenwood in 1996 — year of The Rock, Fargo, Independence Day and Scream. There were many glorious years ahead of it.
But years passed, ownership changed, and the Pavilion’s handful of screens no longer felt adequate in the multiplex environment of the 2000s, leading to an awkward subdivision of the theater space into nine screens. But the problem with the Pavilion, inaugurated “the worst movie theater ever” by ScreenCrush, was never small screening rooms or a weird multi-floor layout, but endless neglect. Screens were dirty and torn. Everything was sticky. The speakers crackled. Screenings listed online wouldn’t exist upon arrival (“It’s broken,” was the explanation I was given for a Pain & Gain screening. Still not sure what was broken.) In the summer the Pavilion sweltered. During a morning screening of Warcraft, they tied open the top-floor emergency exit doors, rather than turn on the A/C, pouring sunlight onto the screen and overwhelming the dialogue with the construction work outside. In the winter, those same exit doors would flap in the wind.
The Pavilion Cinema Yelp page is a catalog of similar horror stories. “Pieces of tissue paper in my drink cup.” “Movie theater smelled faintly of a sewer.” “It looked like the top portion of the screen was on fire because it had a wavy quality to it.” One reviewer posted photos of alleged bed bug bites, just one of several claims of rat, cockroach and lice infestation.
Aaron Stewart-Ahn brought the receipts:
But it doesn’t matter now, because the Pavilion is dead. It closed in October of 2016, to be gutted and replaced by the second location of one of those boutique theaters with the waiters and the little tables and the alcohol and mediocre food. Last time I was there, a guy with a sledgehammer was tearing asbestos out of the walls. So why stomp on its grave?
Because the Pavilion won’t die. The soil has been disturbed. Like Jason Voorhees, but uglier, the Pavilion cannot be killed. And now the Pavilion Park Slope is ruining moviegoers’ days without actually managing to screen a movie once in a while. Someone or something, perhaps a malignant algorithm, continues to post movie times for the dead and buried theater. Here are the screenings listed for today:
There is no Dunkirk to be had at 188 Prospect Park West. There will be no trailers before Despicable Me 3. There will be no Despicable Me 3. But the worst movie theater in, if not the world, New York at least, is determined not to relinquish the title. And so, like the sickly sweet smell of the carrion flower, it will continue to lure in unsuspecting theatergoers. There are some evils even death cannot end.
