YouTube has just banned this trailer for 'The Nun' for being too scary. (Watch, if you dare!)
If you’ve been lurking on YouTube lately, you may have been the victim of a ghost-nun ambush. A six-second trailer for The Nun, the latest installment in the Conjuring horror franchise, has been pulled from the video platform after thousands of users retweeted a warning about its jump scare.
The video is indeed shocking, not to mention deceptive. It begins with a volume symbol that makes it look as if the sound on the video has been turned down. The user who then turns up the sound in response will get an earful of sudden noise, along with a terrifying close-up of the demonic title character. Watch the banned ad below — unless you’re too much of a wimp.
The trailer might have had a warmer reception if it had been targeted at or sought out specifically by horror fans. Instead, the video played as pre-roll before unrelated videos, scaring the rosary beads off unsuspecting viewers. The Twitter user who brought it to YouTube’s attention was watching a gaming video before getting caught off-guard by the ear-splitting noise:
WARNING! If you see an ad on youtube with the volume sign 🔊🔉🔇 being turned down and nothing else, ITS A JUMPSCARE for the new NUN movie coming out. i advise you look away and/or turn down the volume if you have anxiety or just straight up hate jumpscares, pls rt to save a life
— apple 🍎 (@bbydvas) August 12, 2018
After her warning received more than 100,000 retweets, the official Team YouTube Twitter account responded, announcing that the ad had been pulled.
Appreciate you bringing this to our attention! This ad violates our shocking content policy and it’s no longer running as an ad. More info here: https://t.co/dOUocjUevh
— Team YouTube (@TeamYouTube) August 14, 2018
YouTube doesn’t always have the best track record when it comes to enforcing its content policies, due in part to the high volume of videos uploaded to the site, according to Gizmodo. A similar issue has even happened before, with a pre-roll ad for the horror film Insidious: The Last Key playing before Lego tutorials and other content aimed at children. Then again, some Twitter commenters are hypothesizing that Warner Bros. distributed the ad with the intention of getting it pulled, in order to get The Nun some publicity in a saturated horror market.
It’s one way to create a buzz about the film, people are drawn to the negative press and their audience grows. It would be preferable that they give users the ability to disable or blacklist certain genres or products, but YT isn’t that well known for its customer service ethics.
— TeaBiscuits🖌 (@tea2biscuits) August 13, 2018
Naturally, parody videos have already started popping up to mock the ad. Here’s one with a special guest appearance by John C. Reilly’s Adult Swim character Dr. Steve Brule.
And here’s what happens when the Conjuring nun makes her way into a Wreck-It Ralph 2 trailer.
The Nun opens in theaters on Sept. 7.
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