Do you remember those kids in high school who used to brag that they laughed while watching horror films? The impulse is almost scarier than the movies themselves. Cracking up at The Exorcist is possible only if you agree that jokes are indeed epitaphs on the death of feelings and you don’t mind committing emotional suicide in order to feel aloof and edgy. This is what I thought of when the audience snickered at the moment Kee unbuttons her robe and reveals that she is mysteriously, probably miraculously, pregnant. It was what I thought of when the audience went on tittering and gigging and hooting at dozens of other inappropriate points in the film. The shot of her swollen belly is one of the most beautiful in all of cinema. To laugh at it is like walking into a museum and pointing out the genitalia in Renaissance paintings, or belching along to Wagner at the Met. The first time I heard unexpected laughter I thought it was a fluke. There are a handful of grimly amusing moments, but no real belly-laugh material in this dystopian drama about the consequences of worldwide infertility. Eventually I found myself wondering whether these people were watching a different film. The only other possibility was that they were sociopaths who had never been to the movies before.