Someone Fainted During a Horror Screening, and the Gore May Not Be to Blame

Megan, a horror podcast host, was in the theater for the Fantasia festival screening of Penny Lane Is Dead when it happened. Just after a particularly gnarly sequence in the Australian horror movie, someone in the audience passed out.

The incident did not stay in the room. Reports floating around online, including from outlets like Dread Central, described a person passing out during the screening. Megan says that account is technically correct. She was there, and she has since seen the fainting written up at least three times.

What she disputes is what the fainting proves. She says there is no way to know whether the person fainted from the movie itself or from a separate medical issue. It took place after what Megan called "a particularly gnarly sequence," so the movie may have played a role, but a problem like low blood sugar is also possible. The cause is unknown.

Megan said she feels people like to push these kinds of stories. She jokes the person should monetize the attention, since people are using it to write articles. She said, "If they can go get that bag."

Megan herself says she was not particularly bothered by the film, though she adds that she is pretty desensitized at this point. Her larger point is that you never know what will affect you physically until you are in it.

She knows because it once happened to her. When she watched Gerald's Game on Netflix, the 2017 adaptation in which a woman pulls her hand free and strips skin from it in what she calls the hand degloving scene, she grew very lightheaded and thought she was going to faint. They had to pause the film.

Thank God, she says, they were not in a movie theater that time.