It's been almost a year since I signed up for MoviePass. At the time, for only $9.95/month I was able to see one movie, ANY movie, every day of the month. There were no limits to how many times you could see a particular title. If it was playing in a theater and you hadn't seen a movie that day, then you could see whatever was playing.
Not much of 2018 had gone by before MoviePass made its first alteration on its plan: you can only use the service to a movie once. Now, for the regular viewer that's not really an issue. But with MoviePass I was able to see Thor: Ragnarok four times. I planned on seeing pretty much every comic book movie, especially Avengers: Infinity War, multiple times.
If you haven't read any of the MANY articles published about MoviePass's money problems starting around mid-July, well, I can't rehash everything here. I can only tell you what was happening from my point of view.
MoviePass wasn't letting anyone see any movies. They were hemorrhaging money to nobody's shock or surprise. I was seeing maybe eight movies on a good month, four on a normal one. At the theater I was going to, admission was around $12.50. So let's say on a good month I would have spent $100 at the theater. With MoviePass I was only spending $9.95, making each movie roughly $1.25. That's insane. And there were TONS of people taking full advantage of the service and seeing one movie every single day. That's $.33 per movie.
So nobody could see any movies, and that lasted for a couple of weeks. MoviePass had to borrow a little bit of money ($5 million if I recall correctly), and during that time there were rumblings of the whole system just crashing down. I wasn't initially pissed off because I knew deep down that something like this had to happen. There was just no way for this service to make money, and frankly I was surprised that it lasted as long as it did.
Rather than admitting defeat, the powers that be decided to retool the program instead of scrapping it altogether. When I quit the service (without being able to see a single movie the entire month of August), I think the plan was limited to three movies each month, no repeats, and some movies blacked out, for the same price of $9.95 per month. Is that a good deal? Sure. That's still less than the price of one ticket, even if I couldn't ultimately see EVERYTHING I wanted to see. But really, it's not what I was promised, and with school in full swing and not fully knowing which weekends I will or won't have my kids, this was really the perfect time for me to quit. Had it not been for the really crappy issues the service had in July and August, not to mention the absolutely non-existent customer service, I would consider signing back up once marching band and football season ends, but those were two very shady months.
I went back through my Facebook feed to find a couple of posts where I complained about the service.
"Last Friday I checked the app to see what my options were, and I saw two late showings for Mission Impossible (among a couple other offerings). I was stoked. When I checked again after getting home from work, EVERYTHING was gone. I checked on line and saw that it wasn't just me, but some people had some luck using it when they purchased their tickets early in the morning. So Saturday I checked, and EVERYTHING was available, all movies, all showtimes. I jumped in my car, went to the theater to get a matinee ticket for MI: Fallout, and by the time I pulled up the app in the parking lot (I literally live about 300 yards from the theater), Slenderman and one other movie were available.
I've re-cancelled my subscription (after having the original cancellation canceled by the new opt-in that I never opted in to), and my last day to use it will be the 25th of this month. I've got plans this weekend, but we'll see if it's functioning on the 24th and 25th, otherwise I gave them $10 for nothing this month."
For a little bit of clarity, in August, MoviePass was re-upping all current subscribers to the new 3-movie $9.95 plan. I cancelled my subscription in early-to-mid August after being absolutely fed up.
"Just got an email from the jackasses at MoviePass. They were thanking me for the opt in to their new plan. Uh...huh? I cancelled my subscription more than a week ago. What's that dumbasses at MoviePass? The opt-in (which I most definitely did NOT do) cancels the cancellation? It's like they went full-on shady villain during this past month, what with the blackouts a few weeks ago, then this past weekend with no movies at all being available, and now uncancelling subscribers' cancellations. SHAAAAAAAAADY."
Last I heard, I had at least one friend who still subscribed. For her, even with the restrictions it's still a good deal. More power to her. Like I said, I just don't have the time for it right now and I just don't trust them. Despite the deal, I won't give any amount of money to a place that has abused and taken advantage of my trust. I'm thankful of the movies I got to see which I would not have been able to afford before, but it was just too good to be true.
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