Meanwhile, just a few hundred nautical miles down from China, who’s just banned all horror movies from their shores except for the millions of pirated copies being sold on the street, the Australians go way too far the other way.

A official of the Australian government recently put on a movie night for some underage sex offenders—some as young as fifteen years old–at a juvenile detention center, naturally at taxpayer expense. Okay, you might think…no real problem there. Maybe they were getting a reward for behaving properly or something. Well, it’s not really a problem until you hear what movie they were watching.

The movie in question? Wrong Turn 2: Dead End.

And no, it’s not a Sci-Fi Channel Butchered For Television version either, it’s the full-bore sex-and-violence misery detail of Wrong Turn 2: Dead End. Which, frankly, was a pretty sad and sorry movie to begin with, but showing it to underage sex offenders is fairly well akin to lighting up a crack pipe in the middle of a black powder factory. These kids aren’t what you’d call right in the head to begin with, and the fact that they’re as young as fifteen is even worse. Letting a fifteen year old kid watch a horror movie—especially those specifically rated for adults or those that don’t even carry ratings—requires a whole lot of maturity out of said fifteen year old. If the term “sex offender” can be applied, that generally disqualifies said fifteen year old.

Though the Australian press applied its standard mainstream ignorance to the report—there were no zombies in Wrong Turn 2: Dead End but rather inbred mutant backwoods cannibals—the salient facts remain. Showing horror flicks to sex offenders is a bad idea. The juvenile justice facility, meanwhile, says that the staff member in question had been disciplined and moved to an administrative position at the same pay level. This is apparently not the first time, either—word is that inmates at the Cobham detention center got to watch Saw II.

The key point is clear enough that it almost goes without saying. Horror flicks are not in and of themselves dangerous—too many people watch them too often without incident to suggest that they themselves carry some kind of danger–but some care needs to be exercised in their exhibition to minors and other impressionable people. Like Australian sex offenders, for examples.

But chances are, you won’t have a problem with the Wrong Turn trivia questions currently on Kwanzoo. Kids, get your parents’ permission before playing. Or watching, for that matter.

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