10 Best PG-13 Horror Films
The much-maligned rating doesn't always guarantee a fright-free horror film...
Alright look, by now, everyone has heard the anti PG-13 horror argument.
Since its inception in the mid eighties, the PG-13 rating has acted as a go-between for films which are a bit too intense for kids but have done nothing to earn an adults-only R rating. The category itself was originally created after a flood of concerned parents complained about the one-two punch of massively successful dark kids's films in 1984, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Gremlins.
And it served a purpose, ensuring pre-teens weren't exposed to the sight of a torn out still-beating human heart or Phoebe Cates' disturbing, darkly funny story of how she discovered there was no Santa. But after a spate of gory slasher flicks filled cinemas in the nineties post-Scream's revival of the sub genre, the early noughties saw a new trend in the form of Japanese horror re-imaginings and cleaner slasher remakes.
These hits infamously avoided gore to earn a PG-13 rating and maximize their audience, and many of them avoided any solid scares in the process.
But despite the rating's reputation as a dumping ground for sanitised remakes and bloodless bores, the PG-13 horror can be a formidable beast whose deceptively gore-less surface can mask serious scares, as epitomised by these ten gems.
10. The Sixth Sense
As if solely to flex on the premise of this list, infamous dud director/ occasional instant classic helmer M Night Shyamalan’s blockbuster mystery The Sixth Sense doesn't just prove that a PG-13 horror can, in fact, prove terrifying.
Instead the filmmaker goes one further and proves that a PG-13 horror which was inspired by a PG horror series, RL Stine's Goosebumps, can still make for pant-s****ing terror (or pant-jizzing horror, in the case of the Lonely Island).
This sombre, scary Haley Joel Osment vehicle remains the gold standard against which any future PG-13 horrors are measured. The simple story of a troubled psychologist who helps a young boy cope with his unwanted ability to see the dead, the film's infamous twist still packs a hell of a punch almost two decades later.
But it's the terrifying brief appearance by future O.C star Mischa Barton as an ailing ghost girl which assures that this one earns a place on this list, as the horror would be nowhere near as effective without this shocking scene which somehow made its way past censors in 1999.