Theater Accidentally Plays Horror Movie Trailer Before Peter Rabbit, Families Run Out Screaming

The upcoming horror movie Hereditary is being touted as one of the scariest films of the year. So when a theater outside Perth, Australia accidentally played the trailer before a screening of Peter Rabbit, you can guess what happened.

“It was dreadful,” one parent at the screening told the local news website WA Today. “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.”

The screening was on Wednesday, a national holiday in Australia known as Anzac Day, where most people get the day off. But some families who had chosen to go to the movies got way more than they bargained for. One horrified witness explained how other parents, “fled the cinema with their kids in tow.”

Understandably, the movie theater wanted to make things right. The theater, Event Cinemas in Innaloo, released a statement:

As soon as the staff onsite were made aware of the situation yesterday, the trailers were taken off-screen immediately and all patrons were given complimentary tickets as a gesture of goodwill.

The only problem? The movie theater even messed up their apology. The free movie passes reportedly had an expiration date of April 25, 2018, the same day as the screening.

“We had been told they were valid for a month but they were out of date,” one parent told WA Today. But the theater insists that the free tickets will be honored until April 25, 2019, no matter what’s printed on the piece of paper.

For comparison’s sake, here’s the trailer for Hereditary…

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…and here’s the trailer for Peter Rabbit:

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So you can see why both parents and kids might have been a little disturbed on their day off.

Hereditary, which actually looks pretty good in this humble blogger’s opinion, hits theaters June 8th. You can read the io9 review here. Peter Rabbit is in theaters now.

[WA Today and Pedestrian.tv]

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