Why the hostility towards PG-13 horror?

This is just something that occurred to me today. Naturally, I already knew that PG-13 horror movies aren't inherently bad, but I realized there seems to almost be a contradiction.

No one objects to PG-rated horror films, like Coraline and Para Norman. Hell, many of us grew up watching Goosebumps every week. We accept that kids like to be scared, so frightening kids with these movies is fine.

Likewise, obviously, we love R-rated horror films.

...so, why is PG-13 somehow off-limits?

Furthermore, many classic code-era horror films probably WOULD be PG-13 for violence if nothing else, if they were rated today, like Psycho and Cape Fear.

I find this particularly bizarre with the Universal Monsters. Sure, their movies were shocking in their day, but most fans today became fans as kids, because by today's standards the films are quite family-friendly. Furthermore, the Monsters have been used in cartoons and other family-friendly media for decades now.

While it does bother me that Universal has said they want to be more action-adventure than horror, I wonder if that's at least partially because the horror community has practically rioted in recent years at the mention of PG-13 horror films (an unfortunate reaction that probably screwed over Cry Wolf at the Box Office).

I did like Benecio Del Toro's Wolf Man, but if I ever have kids I would love to have a version I could have a version I could share with them when they were 11 or 12 that was more modern.

It's not just horror films. Hollywood films in general tend to be calculatingly manufactured get that magic "PG 13" rating, which is why Hollywood will continue to be the number #3 movie industry.

edited 13th May '15 11:10:47 AM by IndirectActiveTransport

I don't think hostility towards it now is nearly as pronounced as it once.

Also, Psycho was re-rated. It's R now.

And I think Cry_Wolf was more screwed over because most people considered it a piece of shit.

Double the notion. Hollywood believes that by getting a PG-13 rating, it could maximize the potential audience and make a lot of money. However it winds up cutting a lot of material that would've harmed the movie.

(Number 3? What are the other two?)

edited 13th May '15 1:17:50 PM by TheFarmboy

Nollywood is 2, Bollywood is 1. If Hollywood reaches two, it'll have more to do with Boko Haram toppling government and banning images of living creatures, ala the Taliban than the quality of their movies.

Considering that Bollywood and The Otherwoods (I don't recall whether any particular Indian film industry is Number 1, or whether that's all their regional industries plus Bollywood together) are subject to comparatively strict censorship laws, and tend to have rather poorly executed gore FX, I somehow doubt that PG-13 is a key cause of Hollywood failing to compete with them.

The only horror movies I've ever had time for were the "Gothic fairy tales" of Universal and Hammer, which, yes, would mostly probably be PG/PG-13ish in today's terms. Modern horror fans are mostly gorehounds with no interest in the Nothing Is Scarier trope, so to them nothing but a hard R is worth watching.

Weird generalization, since the last few horror films to get renown among genre fans that I can think of weren't particularly gruesome (The Babadook, It Follows). And most horror films now aren't predicted on Gorn, in any case.

edited 13th May '15 3:46:12 PM by Prowler

Not PG 13 in of itself but that Hollywood gets caught up on marketing gimmicks more than making good films, blows up on its budget on FX, recycles scenes over story telling purposes. Don't get me wrong, Bollywood/Nollywood/whoeverhood all have their own problems(females is magic is an Indian film stereotype for instance, ect) but none of them seem as set in backwards thinking and complacency as Hollywood.

I don't know why you're calling Hollywood the #3 industry. The Other Wiki goes, Nollywood #3, Bollywood #2, and Hollywood #1.

"[Hollywood] officially merged with the city of Los Angeles in 1910, and soon thereafter a prominent film industry began to emerge, eventually becoming the most dominant and recognizable in the world." "Bollywood is one of the largest film producers in India and one of the largest centres of film production in the world." "In 2013, [Nollywood] was rated as the third most valuable film industry in the world after generating a total revenue of NG₦1.72 trillion (US$10 billion) in 2013 alone, placing it behind India and the United States."

How is PG-13 off-limits? I've seen PG-13 horror films.

I was calling them #1 and #2 based on the larger numbers of people getting work there and larger volumes of product produced.

I guess I was wrong, that doesn't make you the more successful studio. Oh well.

This video should explain everything

edited 14th May '15 7:12:44 AM by Xopher001

Thanks everyone, I wanted to get a fair number of replies before responding.

First @Prowler: I looked that up, and per IMDB Psycho was submitted for a rating in 1984, but it doesn't specify what month. Prior to Augusta 1984, the PG-13 rating wouldn't have existed. Given that lack of blood, nudity, or profanity, I find it likely it would get PG-13 today (kind of makes me wonder if they added in the jerking off in the remake just to secure the R).

@Xopher: I don't agree with the standards of the PG-13 rating, but that in and of itself isn't enough to make the films produced from that system bad.

Let's say for a moment that someone declared that masked men were offensive, and would merit an NC-17 rating if used in horror films. I'd certainly think that was an unbelievably stupid rule, but I'm not going to condemn every film that doesn't use a masked man for selling out, or complain that horror films that had no need of a masked killer were automatically inferior.

I'd like to close this post by re-asking a question that I haven't really heard addressed: Why are PG and R-rated horror films both acceptable, but the rating between them verboten?

I feel that in genres like horror where the pushing boundaries and more extreme content is part of the appeal of the genre, many fans come to view the extreme content as not a means to the end of creating a memorable work but as the end itself. If the extreme content is absent in a work that's part of the genre, they view it as lacking an essential element of the genre. Thus they view works that operate on the less extreme end of the genre to be "watered down" or "pussy" (an insult that really rubs me the wrong way).

I see the same sort of thing among the dumber side of metalheads. Metal is another genre where boundary pushing and the extremity of the content play a big part, so this leads to many metal fans hating on softer and less extreme forms of metal for being "pussy" or not "brutal" enough.

As for PG horror films, they probably associate those with their childhood so they give those a pass based on nostalgia. Or alternatively, they views works made with children in mind as the one case where it's acceptable to have different content standards, but if it's made for adults, it has to have extreme content.

edited 15th May '15 7:05:03 AM by djbj

I tend to feel that PG-13 horror is caught in a worst of both worlds situation. It can't push boundaries like R horror, and it doesn't encourage out of the box thinking like PG horror.

There's actually a good reason to look down on PG-13 horror movies: if they were really scary, they would have gotten an R rating.

Seriously, scariness is one of the standards the MPAA uses when rating movies. A famous recent example was The Conjuring, a movie with no nudity or sexual content, no drug use, only mild swearing, and very little violence with only a small dash of blood. If judged by those standards alone, it would've gotten a PG-13 rating. But the MPAA felt it needed to be rated R, because it was just too frightening for PG-13 audiences.

edited 17th May '15 9:52:18 PM by RavenWilder

So in that sense, I guess the MPAA's squeamish.

But seriously, there's a strong belief that PG-13 films would be more profitable than R ones. As such, studios want to draw in a huge teenage attendance since that demographic is fond of horror films. Unfortunately, teens aren't known for being very reliable on judging film quality. Mature horror fans see that approach as pandering and they think that PG-13 limits the scary and gore factor those films should have.

The biggest audience for Unfriended were high school students - who couldn't see the R rated film without dragging their folks to it.

And smart directors don't mind PG-13 horror - see The Ring.

You mean the directors of Ringu? The Ring just took the concept and added more white people. I guess you could say they were "smart" for not changing too much but I don't know how much credit they get for adapting and adaptation that was already in the same genre and medium.

1. That's incredibly dismissive on Gore Verbinski. And PS. I think The Ring is far superior to Ringu.

2. Incidentally, who directed the American The Ring Two? Yep - the director of Ringu.

You know what, I'll just have to re watch the two back to back(and maybe find a copy of the novel), and see if I see your point then.

Having seen the original Ring first, I didn't really get what was so great about the remake. And, no, I really don't care if the rest of Hideo Nakata's movies were poopy poop (I've actually only seen the two first Japanese Ringus, Dark Water and Chatroom by him, of which I like the two latter ones), because I don't think Gore Verbinski's track record is perfect either.

Apparently, the original Poltergeist is PG-13, and my dad and my sister both swear it's the scariest movie ever.

Actually, it was rated PG.

Wasn't it one of the movies that prompted the creation of PG-13, or was that just Gremlins and Temple of Doom?

PG films used to be way more hardcore back in the day. Poltergeist featured a scene where a guy hallucinates that he's ripping his own face off. Nowadays, PG films are usually G-rated films with some adult jokes thrown in. Different time period, and all that.