In Defense of Vibe-Heavy Cinema

The new Dune trailer dropped recently, rewinding my brain back to 2021. At the time, there was endless chatter about television versus movies. The Netflix era had accelerated during Covid, and physical theaters had spent a year gathering dust. But on that night, in that IMAX theater, watching the first Dune, it felt as though cinema was redefining itself, and that its survival depended on audiences letting filmmakers take risks.

I’ll admit: I went hoping to see if Timothée Chalamet really did resemble a medieval shoe, but I stayed for the unexpected visual textures and sonic weight that punched me in the soul. I was enveloped in a type of “visual-first architecture” that demanded whole-body attention, and I remember thinking: This is the kind of immersive power cinema needs to reinvent itself.

Increasingly, filmmakers seem less interested in explaining everything than in letting audiences feel their way through a story. Mood, atmosphere, and immersion are no longer decorative; they are the lifeblood of cinema, and, frankly, the only thing that might keep the art form not just alive but thriving. In a world where movies compete with endless scrolling, TikTok dances, and bite-sized content designed for quick dopamine hits, films that dare to plunge us into texture, sound, and tension offer something the rest simply cannot: A chance to feel intensely again.

Maybe it’s what French sociologist Olivier Roy calls “deculturation,” a world where “…every cultural act seems to be becoming a message to be read, a statement to be placed in quotes,” slowly emptying our vibes cup. Or maybe it’s just that our social lives are filtered through endless notifications and algorithms, making the world feel shallow, confusing, disjointed. But audiences are craving and gravitating towards more immersive experiences; films that speak in sensation rather than exposition and offer the intoxicating promise of a feeling that lands deep in the body.

This is, to put it bluntly, a dumpster fire of a moment: Daily assaults on the nervous system layered atop a fractured, mostly broken reality. Elizabeth Gilbert, like a wry, omniscient owl in Eat, Pray, Love, captured it perfectly: “History has shown that in times of trouble, people turn to art—and expect it to be good. But art is made by humans, and humans are struggling too.” Long before Covid, artists were navigating systems that favored speed over depth and platforms that measured attention rather than craft; the pandemic only accelerated the problem. Any artmaker attempting the slow, sensory, risky work of emotional immersion now has an audience that’s eager to swipe, scroll, or dismiss before it has a chance to work its magic. We’re in an era of perpetual reaction, where every film, every performance, must be dissected instantly, often reducing art to an echo chamber of trivial chatter.

And that, dear reader, is the paradox at the heart of vibe-driven cinema: Audiences say they crave emotional immediacy, yet the moment it arrives, it is met by a digital crowd capable of elevating or annihilating a work in real time, often without ever engaging deeply. It is in this very tension—between an audience conditioned toward performative attention and a creator striving for depth—that artists are rising to the challenge, finding ways to remain relevant without ever sacrificing artistry or intent.

I remember unexpectedly defending Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights as I scrolled through early reactions and endured the meme-ification of chest-baring Jacob Elordi moments. Her lush, wet, visually audacious adaptation drew swift criticism—not for lack of craft, but for privileging emotional resonance over strict period fidelity. Fennell leaned fully into a mood-over-plot gambit while still capturing the spirit of the story, even as some plot details were simplified. What I saw as real artistic nerve, translating the novel’s internal intensity into a sensory, contemporary cinematic experience, was met instead with snap judgments and ineloquent attacks across the cyber universe.

Risk in storytelling isn’t new. Emily Brontë published under a male pseudonym to ensure her work survived; today, that risk is scrutinized and amplified online, leaving even well-crafted work vulnerable to misreading before audiences can fully experience it.

Perhaps the bravest thing we can do as viewers is resist reflexive judgment. Immersive cinema, from Dune to Wuthering Heights, reminds us that the most profound experiences require filmmakers to wager everything on the audience’s willingness to feel. But if we demand immersion and emotion but reject every attempt to deliver it, the boldest, bravest work drifts quietly into the static hum of distraction.