An extremely full-on ad for Movie World‘s Halloween ‘Fright Night‘ series has been condemned by the Ads Standard Board after they received a number of complaints.
The ad, which screened in cinemas in September ahead of Blade Runner 2049, follows standard horror movie trailer tropes. A girl, who appears to be philandering (!), ends up in a spooky dream sequence featuring fucked-looking demon nuns, monster-faced dudes, straight-up murderers and a pretty fucked Saw-style scene.
The Ads Standard Board received one complaint which said that the ad “promotes extreme violence, including sexual assault, and attempted rape and murder“, and another that asked that Warner Brothers issue an apology for it. The ad was eventually yanked from circulation.
In response, Warner Brothers argued that the ad isn’t actually that bad, really, saying that while it’s “reminiscent of movies of the horror genre” it didn’t depict anything “that would cause concern, distress or harm to reasonable members of the community in the light of generally prevailing community standards“. They went on to say:
VRTP [Village Roadshow Theme Parks] refutes any claim suggesting the material in the advertisement indicates the female character was raped. Any suggestion she has been/is going to be raped is with all due respect a subjective assumption by the complainant and was certainly not the intention nor do we believe was conveyed in any way in the advertisement,” the advertiser said.
Unfortch the ad watchdog did not agree with them, saying that the violence used in the advertisement really wasn’t consistent with what’s require to advertise a damn theme park.
The Board noted that although the scenes are from movies, they are very graphic and depict material that is gory and violent. The advertisement depicted high level violence that was not justified by the promotion of theme park entertainment and determined that this advertisement, ahead of an M rated movie did present a level of violence that was not justifiable in the context of the product or service advertised.
Here’s hoping that from here on, amusement parks stick to ads featuring people looking, well, amused.
