Horror movies are meant to frighten us, it's why we go to see them. However, the fact that they're not real is what allows us to enjoy them. However, for some in attendance at a recent screening of the newest entry in The Conjuring franchise, Annabelle Comes Home, things got a bit too real when a 77-year-old British man was discovered dead in a theater following a screening.
Bernard Channing was on vacation in Thailand recently when he apparently decided to take in a screening of the movie Annabelle Comes Home. It's unclear what exactly happened to him after the lights went down. However, when the lights came back up at the theater in the city of Pattaya, Channing was discovered to have passed away.
Emergency services were called by the theater patrons who discovered the body, but he was pronounced dead inside the theater. Needless to say, the others inside the movie were a little shaken after discovering they had been sharing the theater for some portion of the film with a man who had died. Considering the horror movie likely had them already on edge, things must have felt like the movie never ended.
It's certainly possibly that a 77-year-old man simply had his heart give out during the movie. It's also possible that the stress, however slight, associated with watching a horror movie, could have contributed to the event. According to The Sun, an autopsy will be performed to determine the exact cause of death.
Even if the cause of death is a simple heart attack as it would seem, it's unlikely that any autopsy would be able to determine if the stress brought on by the film was in any way directly linked to the movie. It could have simply been a coincidence of timing and the event would have taken place regardless of where Mr. Channing was at that given moment.
This is actually, at minimum, the second death associated with The Conjuring franchise. In 2016, a 65-year-old man in India suffered a heart attack while watching The Conjuring 2.
I'm not sure two deaths is quite enough to say that there is a pattern emerging, but it's certainly disconcerting. A movie that causes deaths among people that watch it sounds like the premise of an entirely new horror movie. Maybe there's another Conjuring spinoff here to be considered. Or, alternatively, another sequel to The Ring.
Of course, if you've got to go, going while on vacation in a beautiful place like a beach resort town in Thailand can't be the worst possible option. Although, as much as I love movies, I'm not sure a screening of Annabelle Comes Home would be my choice for a last movie. It's a solid horror movie, but if I realized i was on my way out, there's a few other movies I'd probably want to see first.
