Children terrified as cinema plays horror trailers

Parents said they were forced to cover their children's eyes and leave a cinema after it mistakenly played graphic horror trailers.

Robert and Jenny Ellice took their sons - aged four and five - to see Lilo and Stitch, but saw "blood splatters" and "screaming" during the previews at a Cineworld in Enfield, north London.

The couple from Epping, Essex, said their children were left "rigid" with fright because staff accidentally played the wrong film.

A Cineworld manager later apologised to them, they said. The BBC has contacted the cinema for comment.

The family thought they were seeing a U-rated film, but were played an advert for M3gan 2.0 - a flick about a murderous doll rated PG-13 in the US, and 15 in the UK.

Mr Ellice, 50, said the trailer featured the doll "attacking someone with a sword and blood going everywhere".

"It was properly nasty stuff," he added.

"It got pretty graphic pretty quick, with blood spatter and violence and people being killed, and there was lots of swearing and screaming."

The father told his boys to cover their eyes and not look, before leaving the screening to complain.

He claimed as they left, an "even more violent" trailer came on.

Mrs Ellice continued: "It was like being stuck in a nightmare. It was just awful."

She said her children were "shell-shocked", adding: "Their world consists of Peppa Pig and what sweets their mum's going to let them eat.

"They don't even know this sort of thing [violence] exists."

Cineworld staff were apologetic and said there had been a technical issue in what was played, Mrs Ellice explained.

But she said the children were "too scared" to stay at the venue and watch the correct film.

The 43-year-old wanted to make sure the issue did not happen again.

"I remember being a child watching scary movies and being terrified for quite a long time after lying in bed, being really frozen with fear," she added.

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