Audiences flocked to see PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 4 this past weekend, making it the number-one film at the box office in the U.S.—but over in Britain, at least one, very young crowd got an upsetting surprise when the supernatural sequel hit the screen instead of MADAGASCAR 3.

Yahoo Movies UK reports that at Nottingham’s Cineworld, PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 4 was accidentally projected to an auditorium in which about 25 families were waiting to see the animated talking-animal adventure. As PARANORMAL 4, following the franchise’s usual style, opens with no credits, the kids and their parents had no warning before a recap of the prior movies’ events included a bloody corpse being hurled at the camera and other frightening bits.

“They started playing the movie and I thought, this doesn't look right,” one parent told the site. “And then I recognized the opening sequence as a flashback to the first movie, which I saw a couple of years ago. 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. Everyone was very upset… It was only about two minutes’ worth of the film, but it was enough to scar them for life.”

A Cineworld spokesman said, “We have investigated the incident and can confirm that this was a technical error with the projector and apologize 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.” No word on how many of the kids were scarred by that viewing of MADAGASCAR 3…

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