A Canadian theater could be in a world of trouble for a while. Or, at least until the children it just traumatized become legal adults.
Apparently, workers at a Montreal cinema made a major blooper (pun totally intended) on Thursday when reels for Detective Pikachu and The Curse of La Llorona were mistakenly swapped. What ensued was a mixture of hilarious, horrendous and I’m not sure what else. The entire thing was captured on Twitter as well, by Screen Rant’s Ryan George.
Dozens of children were sitting in the theater waiting to watch the newest Pokémon movie when the horror began. And by that, I mean horror movie trailers. If this didn’t give parents their first clue that something was about to go terribly wrong, then perhaps they should’ve been following George’s Twitter feed.
The theatre I'm in is playing a trailer for Annabelle Comes Home before Detective Pikachu LOOK AWAY CHILDREN OH NO
— Ryan George (@theryangeorge) May 9, 2019
The trailers for Joker and Child’s Play followed, and so did the live-tweeting. It was when La Llorona started playing instead of Detective Pikachu though that moviegoers probably realized what was happening. But for some kids, it was too late.
Andddd kids are crying. Now the Joker trailer is playing.
— Ryan George (@theryangeorge) May 9, 2019
This is one of those things that’s so hard, yet so easy to laugh at.
George had to be pretty stoked when his Tweets started trending as well as they did, but we imagine the parents in the theater definitely weren’t feeling his stoked-ness. As if things couldn’t get worse, audiences were then moved to a new auditorium to watch the yellow creature they came to see, but when they arrived, the pic was already onscreen and paused mid-film.
The real question here is: how traumatized are the folks who were there to see a horror movie? First, they were treated to a plethora of delightful and probably animated trailers. And then visually assaulted by Detective Pikachu, the cutest Pokémon ever? The horror!