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The latest movie to (potentially) follow in the footsteps of recent high-concept horrors like It Follows, Get Out and

A Quiet Place, doesn’t premiere until June, but the trailer for Hereditary has been making the theatre circuit in recent weeks.

The movie received a perfect score on Rotten Tomatoes after it premiered at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. Critics called it “pure emotional terrorism,” “a ballet of menace,” “this generation’s The Exorcist,” “an absolute nightmare” and “two breathless hours of escalating terror.” (Those, for the record, were positive reviews.)

We can clearly ascertain, in other words, that this is a very scary movie. One might say, not at all for children.

Nevertheless, the trailer was shown ahead of a screening of uber family-friendly Peter Rabbit recently in Perth, Australia, to a theatre packed with parents and “at least 40 children.”

Now, here is a small list of some of the imagery that can be seen in Hereditary’s two-minute trailer: the head of a bird being cut off with a pair of scissors, a very creepy child asking her mother “who will take care of me when you die?”, a boy violently smashing his head against his desk, a person engulfed in flames, another drowned in flies, the list goes morbidly on.

One such theatre-goer named Jane informed The Sydney Morning Herald, “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 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.”

A senior staff member at the theatre eventually arrived and turned the screen off. All customers were offered complimentary movie passes for the incident, while the theatre’s parent company issued a formal apology, promising an internal investigation.

If you can stomach it, watch the trailer for Hereditary below. You’ve been warned.

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Parents were yelling at the projectionist to stop

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Theaters have projectionists in Perth?
 

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Posted by Frank Cox (Member # 6258) on 04-27-2018, 02:59 PM:
 
They probably just turned around and yelled in the direction of the projection room, assuming that someone was there.

I wonder if this was someone's idea of a joke? Placing the most gruesome and brutal trailer in current rotation on a kids show? Seems awfully coincidental to me. I can see how you might put the wrong trailer on because it's listed just above or below the one that you really wanted, but this isn't that. The trailer for I Feel Pretty or Blockers wouldn't be appropriate either but it wouldn't create nearly the same kind of a stir.
 

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Posted by Justin Hamaker (Member # 2165) on 04-27-2018, 03:16 PM:
 
I have a pretty strong feeling the person who built the playlist intended to add Hotel Transylvania 3 and grabbed the wrong trailer. Of course this easy mistake was compounded by not simply double checking their work or doing a QC screening.

That being said, depending on the theatre management software, this could easily have been prevented if the studios included more metadata which prevented a trailer for an R rated movie from playing on a PG movie.


 

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Posted by Marcel Birgelen (Member # 6801) on 04-27-2018, 03:22 PM:
 
Back in the late 1990's, the cinema I worked in didn't make a difference between the pre-shows for different types of shows, we had just one show...

We never got any complaints. I guess, people back then were also a whole lot less sensitive today. If this would happen today, it would fill up the local newspaper, describing to what horrors those kids have been exposed...
 

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Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 04-27-2018, 03:27 PM:
 
People over-react. It's just a freaking trailer that's over in 2 minutes.

Rather than reacting in horror and shock and screaming and yelling, a better thing would be to turn the kid away from the screen, and explain "The theater made a mistake, just ignore all this silly racket it will be over in a couple of minutes." Then if the kid is really upset, go out to the lobby a couple minutes and buy him another candy bar. The incident will be completely forgotten.

Of course I'm not a parent, so I have no room to talk - but my best friend has a young daughter, and that's what he said he'd do, and he's an awesome dad. (And she's a great, well-behaved kid.)
 

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Posted by Rick Raskin (Member # 1561) on 04-27-2018, 04:03 PM:
 

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If you can stomach it, watch the trailer for Hereditary below. You’ve been warned.

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quote: Marcel Birgelen

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people back then were also a whole lot less sensitive

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quote: Mike Blakesley

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Rather than reacting in horror and shock and screaming and yelling, a better thing would be to turn the kid away from the screen, and explain "The theater made a mistake, just ignore all this silly racket it will be over in a couple of minutes." Then if the kid is really upset, go out to the lobby a couple minutes and buy him another candy bar. The incident will be completely forgotten

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