Laughing in the Dark

Are the most intense scenes in “Nosferatu,” “Anora” and “Babygirl” supposed to be funny? If not, why are people cracking up?

Perhaps you’ve heard them.

Chuckles, snorts, even outright guffaws emitted by your fellow moviegoers.

They ripple through the crowd when Nicole Kidman laps up milk from a saucer on her hands and knees in “Babygirl,” when Lily-Rose Depp contorts herself inhumanly in “Nosferatu,” when Mikey Madison is bound and gagged in “Anora,” when Daniel Craig is shooting heroin in “Queer” — maybe also when Adrien Brody does the same in “The Brutalist.”

Maybe it was you making those sounds.

“It was so self-serious, I could not handle it,” said Rob Truglia, a 34-year-old marketing consultant in Brooklyn, of his experience watching “Queer.”

The friends who had accompanied him to the film, a historical drama directed by Luca Guadagnino, didn’t find it nearly so amusing, he said.