A theater full of kids got quite a shock over in Britain recently, when a mistake at a movie theater had the opening scenes of Paranormal Activity 4 beaming into young eyeballs instead of family-friendly animated film Madagascar 3.  Let’s just say the opening scene did not feature a band of ragtag animals with funny voices. 

Families rushed their wee ones out of the Nottingham movie theater as soon as they realized what was going on, but for many tender young eyeballs, it was too late. Some of the kids upset were as young as five, reports Yahoo! Movies UK, with a total of about 25 families in attendance.

One mom who witnessed the mistake with her eight-year-old son said she figured out what was going on because she’d seen th first installment of Paranormal Activity.

“It opens on the most terrifying scene in the first film — where a body shoots full pelt towards the camera. It’s enough to make grown men jump, so you can imagine the terror in these young faces. Everybody just scrambled for the exits, all you could hear were children crying and screaming.”

A spokesperson for the movie theater company said:

“We have investigated the incident and can confirm that this was a technical error with the projector and apologise sincerely to the families. All customers who were affected by the incident were offered refunds and complimentary tickets. We also invited customers to watch the screening of Madagascar 3 half an hour later. We take matters such as this very seriously and are currently working with technicians to ensure this does not happen again.”

I feel for those kids. I can’t even watch The Waking Dead at without afterwards immediately viewing an episode of Arrested Development to make the bad scaries go away.

Cinema shows Paranormal Activity instead of Madagascar 3 [Yahoo! Movies UK]

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