Scary poster ads for films

[Sunshineonleith12]

Would you have a problem with this poster being shown at the front entrance to a shopping centre?

I went to asda today and there was a dvd for a film about killer clowns... the cover was about as scary as that poster. My dd said "oh look a clown" she didn't register the fact it was holding a machete or that it was covered in blood. I imagine she would react the same to that poster.

I agree with you OP. some kids and some adults hate seeing this type of image and it can stay with them.

But ultimately the guidelines say this sort of image should not be shown where young children can see it so at the entrance of a shopping centre is a no no.

So absolutely right to complain. YANBU.

It's a scarcrow..... and a crow at night time. Do adults really find that image so disturbing that it would stick with them? I could get that some children might find it creepy but it's about as scary as a goosebumps cover

Seriously?

It's just a picture of a scarecrow in a stormy field. I really wouldn't worry about it. Your kids will pick up on you overreacting to stuff like this and become anxious themselves.

That picture wouldn't personally bother me and I'm fairly sure it wouldn't hold enough interest to catch ds's attention.
I didn't particularly like the advertisements for the nun film or any film in that series and found that creepy. Apparently advertisements for that film got banned as they were using the image for a jump scare in the middle of youtube videos.
Anyhow, I am going to see scary stories to tell in the dark next week and do hope it's good. It is based on a young adults children book which had some quite scary images accompanying it.

There’s a big poster for the last IT film, in london underground, it’s a huge poster of just the clown. My little weirdo DD4 loves it, she gets excited to see it on our way home, I can see that it would frighten other children though.

Well my son would have freaked out at a poster of the teletubbies he was seriously scared of them for some bizarre reason. But a scarecrow wouldn't have bothered him.

I was in shopping centre with DH this week, we saw the same ad on one of those digital boards and said the same thing! As it was scrolling though a number of ads it caught my eye.

Neither of us thought it was appropriate at lunchtime in a setting where children would reasonably be expected to see it.

Personally, I don’t think YABU.

My son was absolutely frickin terrified of mannequins until he was about 5. That made shopping centres hard work! I think children get scared/ not scared at all sorts and you just help them find a way to deal with it. If one of mine was scared of this poster I'd probably just pick them up and carry them past it while they shut their eyes or something.

I agree OP. I used to hate it if the posters advertising films and books at the station were horror-like when DS was young.

It’s a scarecrow

Clearly it's more than a scarecrow...the whole image is meant to be attention grabbing and sinister. There was something similar on a phone box near my house for ages and it scared my nnt daughter enough for her to keep asking about it for ages after.
I don't think advertisers have the right to display ads in peoples communities without some thought to how people feel about it. Same for the gross images of women that are so objectifying.
I always complain each time. I hope enough of us do. Not everyone is ok with scary movies and we shouldn't have them shoved in our faces.

It’s not scary at all

Give over you lot, its not ‘just a scarecrow’ at all, marketing has a lot of psychology behind it and it is designed to purposefully unsettle you at a base level - which means many young children will find it disturbing (most probably won’t be able to articulate why but tbf most adults wouldn’t either- there’s a lot of thought in he shape of the figure, the shape of the body parts, the gait, the features etc etc).

As a film poster it’s good, does what it’s supposed to do, but i would agree with OP it’s not appropriate to be pasted out and about where families/young children are.