The People Who Watch Movies on 2x Speed

Recently I struck gold in a Catford charity shop, and walked out with ten DVDs for £5. Among my haul was Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo and Juliet, which I threw on as soon as I got home, eager to watch young Leo – dressed in an impeccable Hawaiian shirt – drop to his knees in agony. 

“This is sped up,” my boyfriend declares, three minutes in. “You haven’t seen this before,” I retort, “it’s meant to be fast.” Two minutes later, just as the warring Capulets and Montagues are poised to ignite one of the best gas station scenes in cinematic history, he pauses the film again. “It’s definitely sped up, their voices sound weird.” Ten minutes and two more disputed pauses later, he plays the Radiohead song from the film’s soundtrack through his phone. “See, the pitch is different.”

To my frustration, he was right. We loaded up a stream, and the DVD version felt horrible in comparison – like the whole film was on helium. Surely, I couldn’t have watched the whole movie like that, could I?

Well, apparently a whole bunch of people are doing exactly this – and not because they accidentally paid 50p for a pirated DVD like me. Some people are choosing to watch films at faster speeds. Because… Efficiency? Degraded attention spans? A deep hatred for film directors? Some other equally deranged reason?

If I sound scornful of this new viewing habit, it’s because I am. But, to be honest, I should have seen it coming. It’s not like speed-watching is anything new, after all. YouTube and Netflix come with the option to watch at different speeds – allowing anything from normal up to 2x. We all know people who speed-watch instructional YouTube videos and university lectures, men are speed-walking everywhere, and I’ve heard of people speed-listening to podcasts, memoirs, and even mindfulness exercises. 

In our contemporary age where consuming as much as possible as fast as possible is conceived as a virtue, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that people are trying to cram in as much information as they can. And why not consume art like information? Everything’s content now anyway, right?

With Goodreads, BookTok, and plain old neoliberal competition creating a culture where people log their book “totals” and “targets” like miles on Strava, this behaviour was inevitable. According to Audible, around five percent of users have tried listening to audiobooks at 1.5x speed or faster. So people whizzing through movies at double-pace makes a sick sort of sense in this era. It might not be what the writer, director, actors or crew had in mind, but it still counts as having seen it – enough to log it on Letterboxd and like some tweets about it, at least. In the words of Parasite director Bong Joon-ho, “To me, that’s cinema!”

Maybe I’m being too harsh, and shouldn’t knock the habit before I’ve tried whacking on Oppenheimer at 2x speed. I could at least listen to the other side. So, in an effort to be more open-minded, I tracked down some speed-watchers to ask them: Why?

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“Since you could speed-watch, I’ve seen my mother speed-watch films, and always wondered why,” author and presenter Sonya Barlow tells VICE. “But when I started to sit down and watch shows on streaming sites, I totally understood.” Barlow has ADHD, and believes this is why speed-watching appeals to her – it stops her getting bored or distracted. “I’m used to running around,” she says, “so when I watch TV or listen to podcasts, it’s not that I am rushing the show; more that I’m avoiding the silences and long pauses in between, which can slow things down.” She insists she can still “appreciate a director’s tempo and the production, so it’s not a disrespect to them – more a way to ensure that I don’t disassociate from the medium.”

I’ll admit it: I’m torn about this. On the one hand, I understand why neurodivergent audiences might desire or require different ways of watching – many cinemas now host autism or sensory-friendly screenings, for instance. If it helps Barlow focus on a film without dissociating or simply switching off half-way through, perhaps speed-watching should just be seen as another way of making films more accessible or enjoyable for people with neurodiverse conditions. 

But while this might be helpful in cases where you simply want to follow a plot or glean information, I can’t shake the sense that at a certain point you’re not really… watching the film. Because films are about more than just plot – they’re made with an intentional pace, rhythm and style. Can you really appreciate a director’s tempo when you’re fast-forwarding through every pause in dialogue? And unlike sensory-friendly screenings, which aim to reduce stimulation, isn’t all this encouraging ever decreasing attention spans?

“I’ve always liked having subtitles so I can process information faster and don’t feel I’m having to ‘wait’ for the dialogue,” Nicole Gray, 28, tells VICE. “But I found that this led to the show itself feeling too slow.” Now, she often watches TV and films at 1.25x or even 1.5x speed. “Working in social media means I’m well-versed in the need for short-form, attention-grabbing content,” she says. “I’m someone who operates at a fast pace by default.”

Are our TikTok and Instagram Reel habits eroding our ability to watch anything longer than a few minutes without feeling bored? Perhaps, but Gray insists this isn’t the case. “I don’t believe this is 100 percent related to attention span or something where short-form content is at fault,” she says. “Often, I’m multitasking and watching something educational and there is a lot to learn and cover in a limited time. I’m able to process information quickly,” she adds, “so there is minimal downside to speeding up the learning process for TV or film in the same way I would do a podcast.”

Media consultant and publicist Tracy Lamourie says similar of her speed-watching habits. “I’m just way too busy otherwise,” she says. “If it lets me go to 1.5x or 2x, I do that.” She only has a few exceptions: “If there are heavy accents I usually only do 1.25x,” she says, and “when watching movies created by friends, I know what went into it, and watch it as it was meant to be watched.” The rest of the time, she goes for as fast as possible. 

I can almost sense Martin Scorcese shuddering at this, but, like Barlow, Lamourie insists it’s a simple question of personal preference. “Most things I just don’t have time for unless I take it in quickly,” she says, “and I think fast and talk fast, so also consume media fast.”

Are films works of art, to be watched and enjoyed just as much for their style and atmosphere as their plot? Or, are they more instrumental – something that information can be extracted from? 

“I’ve worked out a way to suss out within the first ten minutes if a film is going to be worth watching,” says Henry Chebaane, a multidisciplinary creative who has been “studying and practising ‘storytelling’ through various media for at least 40 years.” For him, films are often objects of study – he watches them to pick apart narrative devices – so he’s formulated a system. “What happens in the first five minutes, then five minutes after that, indicates what the rest of the 80 minutes or more will be,” he declares. “If it is worth it, I will let the art immerse me into the story and its characters, respecting whatever aesthetic decisions the director has taken,” he says. If by ten minutes in he’s not convinced, “I know I’m in for a dud.” 

Then the question is, should he stay or should he go? “By professional curiosity, I usually stay, but then I speed through the movie, stopping at specific intervals to verify my assumptions that it is not worth watching in its entirety,” he says.

Personally, I think this sounds exhausting. But ultimately, who am I to judge what people get up to in the privacy of their own living rooms. If you want to watch films at double-speed or in 20 second intervals, or in snippets on TikTok, I won’t stop you. Live and let live, do what you want, fuck it. 

In the end, maybe it all just comes down to taste. “I could be wrong and someone else might see gems where I see turds,” as Chebaane puts it. “There are some I’ve watched ten to 20 times, slowly, one delightful second at a time,” he adds, citing the films of Ava DuVernay, Jane Campion, Sofia Coppola, Christopher Nolan, Ridley Scott and James Cameron as examples. “This could be called ‘slow watching’,” he suggests, “because once you know the plot and characters, you can let yourself be absorbed in the minutiae of the art and craft.” 

Me, I’d just call that watching. But what do I know? After all, I still own a DVD collection. Perhaps, by watching at normal speed, I’m just clinging on to another relic of a bygone age.