I Watch 'Em So You Don't Have To

WHY PG-13 HORROR MOVIES HAVE GOT TO STOP AND NO, IT'S NOT FOR THE REASONS YOU THINK...

This was bad enough...

Let's Have Kids Enjoy Being Kids


Before I roll out the movie Ouija, rated PG-13, I thought I'd put my two cents in as to why there should not be PG-13 horror movies.

I'm not saying this because I want tons of gore, language and nudity in my movies - if a movie can be scary without that (and no shaky found footage shit either) then congratulations. But it STILL should never be rated PG-13.

The world today is a scary place, but believe it or not my young ones, the world has ALWAYS been scary. It's just that in today's world, news travels almost instantly across the globe. If there's a murder or a slaughter or a war, we know about it within seconds or minutes or hours. But this is not the point I'm trying to make. What I'm trying to say is, kids should have a chance to enjoy their childhood without being scared all the time about things they have absolutely no control over.

I'd seen horror movies when I was way too young. I didn't understand a lot of what I saw and had misconceptions about several things (if you've read my blog on my Reddit questions, you already know what I'm talking about). But what SCARED me when I was young was reality. Besides being in a nasty childhood which I won't describe, things were happening back then too that I should never have been exposed to.

This was more my speed...

I've told this story before so I'll keep it short. In the middle of the day, on the news (and this was local, there was no cable), they started with one of those 'If you have young kids in the room you might want to make them leave' type of statements which guarantee that any kid within earshot is instantly going to glue themselves to the screen.

A television journalist was working in Managua with his crew when they were stopped at a checkpoint. They had press identification for protection but things went fatally wrong. The journalist was ordered out of the vehicle. No one knows what was said, but suddenly the journalist was on the ground and moments later was shot in the head. I had nightmares for months from this. I remember praying over and over every night just trying to not be scared enough to go to sleep.

So watching horror movies? Pffft, piece of cake. But not for most young ones. Rating horror with an 'R' keeps the audience aware that there is really something to the movie, whether a scare or gore or language or nudity. When you rate a movie PG-13, people, including parents, seem to think that what that means is the movie is 'safe' for everybody.

Remember my story about watching Men In Black III, rated PG-13? It was a rare evening to get to watch a new movie in the theater, but I spent the movie trying to keep a 5 or 6 year-old from crying, she was so scared (her dad had to sit in another row). PG-13 does NOT mean okay for kids. It does NOT mean a family movie.

Anything with slimy black hair will do...

So. I looked at a list somebody had compiled and a lot of the PG-13 horror movies are knock-offs of Asian horror like The Grudge or The Ring.  There's Devil, The Sixth Sense, and Village (take a vacation M. Night), a whole pile of demon possession movies, and the movie I'm about to rip into little eensy teensy pieces, the Hasbro funded movie so originally titled Ouija, rated for ages 8 and up but rated PG-13, so... that math doesn't really add up either.

Maybe PG-13 should just completely go away. That way I won't be spending the very rare times I watch a movie in the theater comforting some poor little girl who's scared spitless. I ain't never been a mom and don't plan to be one so why should I protect some weekend father's kid from nightmares?

Okay that was mean, I'd protect any kid. What it all comes down to is that no one should have to.