As a Nightmare Fuel page, all spoilers are unmarked as per wiki policy. You Have Been Warned!
Undoubtedly one of Pixar's cutest and sweetest films, Turning Red comes prepackaged with an emotionally touching story about growing up and dealing with change, and with that in mind we can totally guarantee there are definitely zero things in it at all that could possibly scare the crap out of people watching! After all, this movie was created by a studio with a family-friendly reputation... right?
- For Mei, the nightmare starts when she develops a sudden crush on Devon, the clerk at Daisy Mart, and starts drawing some rather off-color drawings of the two of them together. It's apparently the first time she's ever done anything like that — but she's immediately caught at it by her mother. It gets worse when Ming sets off to confront Devon and drags Mei along to watch the whole horribly humiliating scene.
- When Devon is Mistaken for Pedophile and Ming is ranting about the kid taking advantage of Mei, at best she might have gotten him fired, at worst arrested if anyone believed her, and his reputation ruined for his supposed behavior, not to mention tainting the store's reputation by association. Fortunately, it seems that Ming was just being a Drama Queen, and a reasonable store manager can see that the accusations were made over drawings, so Devon keeps his job and doesn't look worse for wear.
- That night, Mei has a serious nightmare, where we are treated to some very disturbing imagery and Jump Scares, which are all shown through a Red Filter of Doom with green lighting, with accompanying Scare Chords. Some of these include:
- Merman!Devon flopping around like a fish on dry land, then a close-up of him doing a Thousand-Yard Stare.
- The 4*Town members appearing as flowers and doing a split-second Nightmare Face.
- A dead bird next to shattered eyeglasses.
- A folding fan that shows Ming’s distressed face on it.
- A horse coughing up... something. Whatever it is, it's possibly vermiform, as the next shot shows a worm split in half.
- Finally, a couple of evil-looking red panda spirits pouncing at the screen.
- Ming's decision to not tell Mei about the red panda has major consequences: Mei is horrified when she wakes up as an eight-foot-tall animal. She does a lot of damage to her house and surroundings in a titanic body she's unfamiliar with, and creates major disruptions at her school and in the city.
- The scale of Mei's emotional breakdown after her desperate run home in panda form is extra-large frightening in and of itself. Twenty-four hours ago, she was a confident, cheerful, self-possessed girl, and now she's crying her eyes out in agony. It's definitely justified — it has been a pretty hellish 24 hours for her — but it's still absolutely gut-wrenching to watch.
- Once Mei's parents realize that she's undergoing the transformation, they opt to quarantine the kid in her room for a month, cutting her off from friends, school, helping at the temple — in short, everything that this intensely extroverted girl enjoys in her life. On top of that, they empty her room of everything but a mattress, which in and of itself is horrific to do to anyone, let alone a young child going through a traumatic experience. Then a montage shows why they had to do it: the room is soon filled with deep claw marks as Mei repeatedly transforms with no control at all. If any of her possessions had been left in the room, they would have been destroyed.
- Much more harshly, the Lee family's problem with Poor Communication Kills and its generational habits of Supernatural Sealing both mean that no one else is there to bear this heavy cross with her. If another family member would, say, transform in front of her, and agree to stay like this until the next red moon and then just go through the sealing ritual with her, it would've brought her some comfort that she's not a freak and she's not alone.
- For that matter, just having another person who has been through this ordeal talk to her about it would have helped immeasurably. It's no coincidence that Mei starts to get a handle on controlling the red panda the minute that someone she loves tells her, "The panda doesn't matter — it's still you inside."
- At dodgeball practice, Mei gets increasingly angry at Tyler as he teases her. Her hand then turns into that of her red panda form, and she throws her ball at Tyler with enough force to break the sound barrier. Fortunately, he's able to duck in the nick of time, and the ball instead breaks a hole in a faraway window. Had she aimed a few inches lower, Tyler would've been decapitated or worse, liquified.
- Mei attacking Tyler at his birthday party is quite a startling moment. She has a panic attack after realizing the date of the 4*Town concert is on the same date as the red moon ritual, and tells him she needs a few minutes, but he demands she gives the party guests more rides and then insults her family to her face. Mei finally snaps, lets out a bloodcurdling scream as she pounces off the roof of Tyler's house, and tackles him hard enough to leave a scratch on his face, and everyone, including Mei's friends, are shocked by this. After that, the boy sobs as he apologizes, and even Mei is horrified by what she has done as she notices the other kids recoil in fear.
- This, along with the dodgeball scene mentioned earlier, does well to emphasize that as fluffy and cute as the panda may be, it was intended as an immensely powerful weapon for fighting entire armies of trained soldiers. Tyler is a thirteen-year-old boy in 21st-century Canada, and it's quite possible that if Ming hadn't arrived when she did, Mei might have accidentally killed or seriously injured him.
- Ming losing her cool after Mei abandons the red moon ritual. When Ming gets to her feet after Mei runs off, her whole appearance is distilled Nightmare Fuel: upright, stiff, fists clenched, and a truly terrifying expression on her face. It's the very essence of Mama Bear-ness, a mother in the grip of Unstoppable Rage, but it's horrific, not awesome, because this rage is directed at her own daughter.
- Then Ming merges with her red panda spirit and it gets worse, as her eyes glow red and she bellows out Mei's name before going after her — all just because Mei defied her expectations to be a 'good daughter' in her eyes.
- The next time we see Ming is even worse, because she's also become a red panda — but her red panda form is absolutely humongous, stomping through Toronto like Godzilla. What's especially scary, though, is that unlike the rest of her family, Ming clearly has little to no control over her red panda form.
- Ming's attack on the concert is a terrifying moment for Mei. Every teen has that moment where they realize their parents no longer have any real power to punish them — that none of the old methods work anymore and no new ones are coming. Mei thought she reached that moment when she openly defied her mother at the ritual, and Ming was helpless to do anything about it. Mei even laughed off the idea of being punished for her actions. Now, suddenly, the "helpless" Ming reappears as a towering, raging monster, with the power to not only punish Mei but to outright kill her — along with her friends, her idols, and countless innocent concert-goers.
- The nightmare continues as Ming rampages through the SkyDome. Aside from bringing the best day of her daughter's life to an early end and all of that property damage, she grabs Mei in a painful hold and furiously orders all the other panicking attendants to leave the stadium and go back to their homes. It's not a pretty sight. Throughout all of this, Mei is in pure terror until she gains the courage she needs to finally stand up to her mother.Ming: (filled with rage while thrashing the stadium) YOU ARE IN BIG TROUBLE, YOUNG LADY! I'M SHUTTING THIS DOWN RIGHT NOW!!
- Mei stands up to Ming by confessing to having came up with the idea of using her panda form for the concert and Tyler's party and that her friends had nothing to do with it, that she likes loud music and boys, that she's 13 years old now, and Ming should deal with it. For a moment it looks like it's going to work... but it only makes Ming angrier than ever. She lets out a deafening roar, and a spooky silhouette of Ming's shadow is shown on the CN Tower next to the Skydome as she does so, before attempting to punish Mei for what she did.Ming: (filled with rage while chasing Mei in the stadium) GET BACK HERE!
Mei: MAKE ME!
Ming: YOU THINK YOU'RE SO MATURE! LYING TO ME! BLAMING ME?! HOW COULD YOU BE SO... SO... CRAAAAAAASSSS?!! - What’s tragic is that Ming had other rampages in the past, one that left her mother physically scarred and another that destroyed half of the temple, and she had absolutely no control over her transformation. But this time, it's worse as Ming has caused so much damage to the Skydome, and it was very likely that she would have killed her own daughter during her blind rage if her red panda form not been sealed away again. This is lampshaded in the ending when Ming was fined $100,000,000 for the damages that she caused in her rampage, much to her complete embarrassment.Mei: All I wanted was to go to a concert!
Ming: I never went to concerts! I put my family first! I tried to be a good daughter!
Mei: Well, sorry I'm not perfect! Sorry I'm not good enough!! AND SORRY I'LL NEVER BE LIKE YOU!!! - Ming is very, very lucky that no one onscreen was injured or worse during her rampage, or the movie might have gotten a higher rating. The SkyDome was full of children, in addition to (unseen) venue and tour staff. From the way 4*Town was hanging, they could have dislocated limbs. Imagine the feeling of sending your child to a concert and then having them come home injured, or not coming home at all — which has happened in real life.
- The nightmare continues as Ming rampages through the SkyDome. Aside from bringing the best day of her daughter's life to an early end and all of that property damage, she grabs Mei in a painful hold and furiously orders all the other panicking attendants to leave the stadium and go back to their homes. It's not a pretty sight. Throughout all of this, Mei is in pure terror until she gains the courage she needs to finally stand up to her mother.
- Mei gets up after attacking and knocking out her mother, looks at the moon and realizes there's only minutes left in which they can do the ritual a second time and save Ming. But thanks to Mei's own attack, the unconscious Ming is lying outside the ritual circle. So Mei transforms to her panda form and starts trying to drag her giant mother into the circle, completely distraught over the fact she had just knocked out her own mother. It's all up to her, there's no one who can help — and all her strength and determination aren't enough. Ming is about to be trapped with the red panda forever, and it will be Mei's fault.
