A teacher in France has been suspended after screening the horror film Saw for a class of 11-year-olds.

Radio network Europe 1 reports that the unnamed teacher told his students: "This will be your first horror film." One pupil arrived home looking distinctly uncomfortable, according to a separate report on the French news site The Local.

"He returned from school on Monday evening, visibly in some discomfort, not well," said the father. "I asked him and he told me his maths teacher had shown them a horror film during class. At the moment the teachers are having staff meetings and parent-teacher meetings, so their classes are cut short and interrupted a bit."

The father subsequently brought the issue up with the school authorities.

The teacher was suspended on Tuesday while the school carried out an investigation, and could face further punishment. "We're in the process of seeing what sort of legal measures we might be able to take in this case," said a spokesperson for the school in Hauts-de-Seine in the north-western suburbs of Paris.

Saw, from 2004, tells the story a masked serial killer who forces his victims to perform gruesome violence on themselves and others as part of a sadistic game. It's considered one of the most influential horror movies of recent times and has so far spawned six sequels.

The incident mirrors a similar case in the US last month, when parents in Georgia filed a complaint against a middle-school teacher who allegedly showed restricted-certificate movies such as Seth MacFarlane's expletive-ridden comedy Ted to 12-year-olds.

• This article was amended on 13 June. It originally gave the name of the teacher as "Jean-Baptiste Clément" when this is in fact the name of the school. This has been changed.