My friend Deb called it the best rainy-Tuesday plan in Akron, and she’s not wrong. You drive up to the corner of West Market and North Hawkins, and that old vertical marquee is just glowing out there in the drizzle like it never got the memo that neighborhood movie houses are supposed to be dead.
The Highland Theatre has been on this corner in Highland Square since 1938. It closed for a long stretch, the way these places do, and then a group of people who actually cared about it brought it back. Now it runs as a nonprofit, which explains a lot about the vibe — nobody’s optimizing the concession margins or hunting for synergy. They’re just showing movies.
What kind of movies? That shifts. Any given week you might catch a first-run indie that the multiplexes aren’t touching, a classic on the big screen, or a midnight horror show that draws a crowd willing to dress the part. I went on a Tuesday night for a 35mm screening of a 1970s thriller I’d only ever seen on a laptop, and there were maybe forty people in that auditorium, all of them absolutely locked in. The sound wasn’t perfect. The seats have history. I didn’t care even slightly.
The building itself earns attention. The lobby is small and unhurried, decorated in a way that feels like someone’s considered collection rather than corporate theming. Local art rotates on the walls. They sell popcorn and candy and beer — yes, beer, poured into a cup you carry into the dark like a civilized adult. Prices are genuinely reasonable; tickets typically run seven to nine dollars depending on the show, and you’re not going to blow twenty bucks on a soda before the lights go down.
Highland Square is worth the trip on its own — it’s one of the few Akron neighborhoods where you can walk from dinner to a bookstore to a bar without getting back in your car — but the theatre is the anchor. On a Saturday night, the sidewalk out front has a low-key energy I haven’t felt at a movie theater in years. People loitering, talking about what they just saw or what’s coming up. It has the feeling of a place that matters to its regulars in a way they’d have trouble articulating.
They do special events fairly often: filmmaker Q&As, themed series, fundraising nights. Their calendar is worth checking before the weekend. If you catch one of the midnight screenings, go with someone who’s fun in the dark.
Parking on Hawkins or the side streets is free and usually fine. The theatre is accessible. It’s not flashy. It’s the kind of place that makes you remember why going to the movies used to feel like an event rather than a transaction, and right now in Akron, it’s the only place doing that job properly.
