I must be watching too much television

There seems to be a recent trend in television advertising to create disturbing images, and I'm not referring to campaigns that are meant to scare you into good practices about alcohol or smoking.

I suppose the most obvious one is the n-Power ad where a little girl's parents switch to another energy supplier so her pet blue and yellow 'spheres' are taken away from her. I see distinct overtones of The Exorcist in this one.

The Vauxhall Vectra and Sintra advert has a sinister, odd-looking, bald-headed man in black clothes getting out of a black car with smoked glass windows after lingering round some young boys playing football in the street.

The Weetabix ad has a scarecrow left to die, abandoned and alone, until a kindly farmer feeds him some wheat.

The student loan advert has a young woman surrounded by increasing numbers of vultures that become more and more confident about sidling up to her.

I don't think my final example is meant to be frightening, but I still find it disturbing. It's the ad for the AA, where a woman, standing by a broken-down car, is approached by lots of AA patrolmen. I assume that the idea of so many patrolmen is meant to be reassuring, but to me they look like they're in a zombie horror film, lurching towards their victim to eat her brain.

OK, I've found these adverts to be memorable, so you could say that in some ways they're successful, but they certainly don't make me want to change to their energy/ car/ cereal/ loan/ repair service.