One minute, you’re a carefree child who’s waiting to see an animated bunny; the next, you’re forever traumatized by the trailer for the year’s scariest movie.
If you were one of the 40 or so kids at the April 25th screening of Peter Rabbit at Event Cinemas in Innaloo, Australia, you (and your future-therapy-paying parents) were in for quite the surprise when the trailer for Hereditary started playing. The A24 horror movie is genuinely terrifying, full of tense dread, a creepy young girl who keeps making clicking noises, and a person on fire. It’s really good… unless you’re a child, then it’s good luck sleeping tonight.
“It was dreadful. Very quickly you could tell this was not a kid’s film. Parents were yelling at the projectionist to stop, covering their kids’ eyes and ears,” a parent at the fateful screening told the Sydney Morning Herald. “A few went out to get a staff member but she was overwhelmed and didn’t really know what to do. Some parents fled the cinema with their kids in tow. Eventually a senior staff member came in with a walkie talkie and he shut the screen off. To his credit he apologized and offered us complimentary movie passes to make up for it.”
The concerned mother later added, “A lot of the kids were upset, and if you think back to your own childhood you remember things that scared you when you saw them for the first time. I still remember the first time I saw a robber on TV.” On the bright side, there are no robbers in Hereditary. Only a dead pigeon getting its head cut off by scissors. That’s basically educational!
