10 Best PG-13 Horror Films

The much-maligned rating doesn't always guarantee a fright-free horror film...

Happy Death Day
Universal Pictures

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

Happy Death Day
Buena Vista Pictures

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.

Contributor

Cathal Gunning hasn't written a bio just yet, but if they had... it would appear here.