Lighting effects, curved screens... An American cinema is banking on immersion to win back audiences

A quasi-hypnotic play of light, surround sound, and a dome-shaped screen: a new immersive experience in the United States is seeking to draw viewers out of their living rooms and back into movie theaters, which are losing ground in the face of the rise of streaming platforms. The Cosm cinema in Los Angeles is one of the architects of this trend and is showing a new version of the cult film The Matrix (1999) in June to offer audiences a unique experience, rather than viewing them in front of a small screen at home.

Cosm Cinemas is "trying to create an addictive and new experience" that remains on a human scale, said Jeb Terry, president of the American company. "Scale and service are still important and I think that's the way to go," he said after the press screening of The Matrix . The company currently has two theaters in the United States, in Los Angeles and Dallas, and plans to open two more, in Detroit and Atlanta. This company, which specializes in immersive experiences, already works with Cirque du Soleil on its show O and on sporting events by placing cameras on the field to allow the audience to experience a game as if they were on the track.

The shared reality sci -fi film The Matrix is ​​the company's first film project, the result of a partnership with Warner Bros. studio . "The Matrix : Shared Reality is about reconnecting cinema with the audience," Alice Scalice, vice president of development at Cosm, told AFP. She called the classic an "ideal choice" for a first theatrical release.

Keanu Reeves plays Neo, dressed head to toe in black, from coat to leather boots and glasses. A computer whiz, he receives encrypted messages from a man named Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) urging him to go beyond the appearances of a fake world created by the evil "Matrix" , whose agents control the entire world. This dystopian cyber-thriller, in which Neo manages to project himself into the future to discover a world in ruins and humans reduced to slavery by the machine, particularly captivated by the choreography of the fights which gave the impression of Neo moving faster than gun bullets.

In this reworked version for the Cosm theater, the viewer is enveloped by the story, to the point of feeling like they are in Neo's capsule, a proposal inspired by the Paris Opera , underlines Jay Rinsky, founder of Little Cinema, a studio specializing in immersive experiences. "You have to let the film be the singer, follow the tone, highlight the emotions, the story through lighting effects, design, 3D. This allowed us to take The Matrix , a cinematic masterpiece (...) and adapt it to give the impression of being inside the film," he says.

The result impressed some of the first viewers, such as influencer Vince Rossi, who said he had an "unforgettable experience, a bit like being in a theme park created for the film."