The full body chill

There's a moment when you're experiencing a piece of entertainment that is so good that you can feel a chill down the spine. It can come out of nowhere, you're just sitting there watching a film or reading a book or comic, and then something happens that is so intense, or stylish, or moving, or brilliant, or just plain human, that you feel a a jolt in the back of the head, and the emotional filters in the soul open right up and breathe deeply.

And sometimes - just sometimes - it is something so good, it's a whole body chill.

It doesn't happen very often. I'm lucky if I get that sensation every couple of years, but it's already happened to me at the local theatre twice in 2025, which makes it a good year, even if both times it was seeing movies that were made decades ago.

The first time it happened, it was Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, which screened as part of a short season of Lynch films to honour the director after he recently merged with the infinite. It's a film I've seen a dozen times, but this was the first time on the big screen, and it was properly sublime. 

The Twin Peaks movie has had a cultural reassessment in the past few years, but was generally slagged off when it was first released (the mighty Kim Newman was the only critic who I saw acknowledge its genius at the time). It is, obviously, an amazing film, and an incredible experience seeing it at the cinema, where it belongs. 

I was already primed for it, helped by some short films of Lynch they showed before the main feature that I'd never seen before, and the final days of Laura Palmer played out with all the tragedy and strangeness I knew and loved.

And then it got to the actual murder scene, and it's so intense, and so loud, and so much of a sensory overload, and then it cuts to absolute silence for a few seconds when an angel shows up and it was such a moment of genuine movie magic that I could barely breathe, as the shiver spread from my spine and filled my whole body.

That's as good as it ever gets.

And then a couple of months later I go to the same cinema for a screening of 28 Days Later, in preparation for the belated sequel, and then it gets to that climactic scene, and the mood and music and tension have all ramped up to insane levels, and then Jim takes one step forward and Selina hesitates, and there it was again - the chill spreading from the spine to fill the whole body.

It's a curiously physical reaction to mental and emotional stimuli, but it's the clearest possible sign that the entertainment you're experiencing isn't just good - it's really fucking good. And that's something always worth chasing after, even if you have to rely on 20+-year-old films to get there.