10 Scariest PG Rated Movies EVER MADE

By Cathal Gunning / June 13, 2022

Thanks to the advent of streaming services, ratings are less effective than ever before in warning audiences of what they're about to sit through.

Gone are the days of video nasties and VHS boxes whose little text window would reveal to potential watchers just how much Language, Sex and Nudity, and Violence (from mild and infrequent to comic and occasional to gory and frequent) they could hope to see.

Most viewers don't even notice the TV-MA warning which pops up in the corner of most Netflix shows, but there was a time when the rating handed to movies played a part in what viewers decided to watch and seriously affected box office performance.

Horror fans know how hugely (and negatively) the PG-13 rating affected the genre in the early 2000's, whilst the decision to abolish the UK's X rating made countless films available to the wider public after years spent effectively censored.

With this in mind, this list is a rundown of the movies which somehow slipped past the censors with a PG rating despite some very un-PG content. From killer babies to torn out hearts, this is a celebration of every scarring flick which unwitting parents guided their kids into.

10. Patrick

Scripted by Everett De Roche, the mind behind 1978's eco-horror Long Weekend, Psycho II director Richard Franklin's Patrick is a disturbing Aussie horror sci fi which definitely didn’t earn the PG rating it was gifted with upon release.

Slow, intense, and unsettling, the flick follows the titular coma-bound killer who harbours secret telekinetic abilities which allow him to continue his reign of terror even when confined to a hospital bed for the film's runtime. With a sprinkling of explicitly sexual content as well as a few gory murders, this one has no place amongst the PG pile and earned an X rating when released in Britain.

Nonetheless, American audiences could introduce kids to the eponymous killer if they saw fit upon the release of this cult classic.