For a cinema that sits at the sleepy end of town, the prices are undeniably high. Spending the bare minimum entails emptying your pockets of £27.50 for two tickets to watch a recent blockbuster. You want a smoothie and a pre-mixed gin and tonic? That’s another £10.00. A millionaire shortbread? £3.70 please. By the time you’ve bought your tickets, snacks and refreshments you’ve only gone and spent £41.20. Cheap.

The inside of the Curzon boasts industrial furnishing with comfy sofas with plenty of space to relax and a chilled atmosphere with few people. Wall-sized glass windows look over to Firstsite and the untouched land next to it. Go up a level and you’ll find a second bar with an outdoor seating area overlooking the Colchester skyline – an unexpectedly delightful view.

Inside the screening rooms there are a vast range of seats across different levels and widths. In Screen 1 each seat has a small table beside it - big enough for a plate and a cup but small enough not to invade your personal space. The seats recline according to your position which makes for a pleasant but equal parts strange viewing experience as you slide from upright to somewhere near horizontal. Within a short space of time you get the hang of the seats, and it does make for a comfortable, luxurious viewing.

One customer, Iona McDiarmid, described the atmosphere as ‘peaceful and sophisticated’ and that the Curzon ‘takes you back to a more glamorous age of cinema’.

The Curzon cinema should be a hotspot in Colchester town, however it suffers from its cheaper, more commercial counterpart down the road. The Odeon cinema provides a marginally less good viewing experience with cheaper food and drinks. The chairs aren’t tailored to each individual’s preferred way of sitting, the atmosphere is livelier, yes more down-market, but for nearly half the price. Coming out from a long and bitter pandemic, price is a dominant force in decision-making now more than ever. In the end cinemas are designed to show films and home cinemas are designed to show films in luxury. It begs the question – is there even a market for a high-end cinema experience?