The Pope's Exorcist ad discontinued for self-harm references

Ashley Regan
By Ashley Regan | 2 May 2023
 
Steinar Engeland via Unsplash

Sony Pictures' ad promoting the horror film The Pope's Exorcist has been discontinued with Australia's advertising complaints handling body Ad Standards finding self-harm references inappropriate.

The 30 second TV ad features several scenes from the film The Pope's Exorcist, including a woman in a nightgown diving from a high building, then shown on the ground being held by a man.

Other scenes show a young girl with marks on her body speaking in a deep voice, and the same girl depicted with her eyes changing. A woman shown screaming with black marks on her face, red and blue eyes

The complaint submitted to Ad Standards said it’s not appropriate to show this sort of program before 10 pm.

"The themes and preview of this film are totally unacceptable for 7:30 pm viewing. It was shown at least twice per ad break. There were scenes of demon possession and violence. The Popes Exorcist ad is too scary for children, even high schoolers.

"Australian Survivor is a family friendly program and this advertisement is not appropriate for this audience. A highly spiritistic, demonic, religious horror movie trailer."

In response, Sony Pictures denied that its ad breached any code of ethics. And blamed its media agency which set up the age restrictions on the on-demand services.

While the Ad Standards Panel believes that majority of the scenes were justifiable in advertising a violent horror movie, the scene depicting a woman standing on top of a building and leaping off, before being shown unmoving on the ground, was violent imagery of an apparent suicide.

Therefore, the Panel found the ad to have a high level of violence and menace which is not justifiable in the context of advertising the horror movie.

As a result, the ad breached section 2.3 violence and 2.6 health and safety of the code because the ad used self-harm references that would be considered inappropriate by most members of the community. The ad was discontinued March 31.

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