One of them tells the story of a boy looking for his missing dad who meets a talking mouse who offers to help him out.
The other involves a social worker looking to protect her kids from a murderous spirit who meets a priest who offers to help her out.
This past Thursday, a group of people who went to see Detective Pikachu, the former, were treated to the latter, The Curse of La Llorona. And while both films do deal with someone receiving help from an unlikely source while battling mystical creatures, The Curse of La Llorona is rated R while Detective Pikachu is PG. The Gamer reports that Screen Rant’s Ryan George took to Twitter to document the debacle, which left several children in tears.
Something seemed off at the Montreal cinema right from the get go, as a trailer for Annabelle Comes Home preceded the film. Another sequel set in the Conjuring universe, it focuses on the creepy Annabelle doll awakening all of the evil spirits around it and wreaking havoc for a young girl. Not the typical kind of trailer to lead into a children’s move with.
According to George, kids already began to cry. Yet the situation was about to get worse. Much worse. After that horrifying trailer, the children in the theater were treated to trailers for the new Joker movie and the new Chucky reboot. By this point, I’d imagine people knew something wasn’t right. Although it would have been something if Detective Pikachu naturally started playing following those clips (I get it’s going for a gritty, darker tone, but not THAT gritty). However, the trailer mistakes finally made sense when The Curse of La Llorona began to play in lieu of the new Pokemon film.
The movie theater then realized its mistake and shut the film off, right after the first scene of the supernatural horror flick in which a mother drowns her children. Everyone was then escorted to a different theater where Detective Pikachu was paused. Apparently a mix up had happened, and those who went to see one film got treated to the other. I imagine all those who went to see The Curse of La Llorona had a slightly better experience in their theater, and were presumably dejected to find that they in fact had to return to the sub-par horror movie they had paid for. For all I know, some of them may have even stayed to see how the tale of the boy and his talking Pikachu friend played out. And for all I know, in the other theater, some poor child did not head the message and has walked away firmly believing that Detective Pikachu is actually the story of a vengeful ghost who hunts for children.
Detective Gengar follow-up, anyone?
