by Andrew Crotts

Created on: May 04, 2008

From what I've seen many a great horror movies have come about with an MPAA rating that ranges from G to R. Old classics like "The Haunting," for example, contained nothing to give it an adult rating. The scare factor came merely from loud sounds. The movie was an enormous success and the forerunner of haunted house movies. More recently, PG-13 movies like The Ring have come about that would be classified as horror movies. No one could deny that the aim of that movie was to frighten the viewers. The rating doesn't matter; the movie is still scary and horrific with or without an R rating. An R rating can be achieved if there is so much as full nudity, which typically has nothing directly to do with the scariness of the movie. Most horror movies with an R rating contain heavy gore, but gore isn't the only way to invoke fear on the audience. Suspense and atmosphere work as well, if not better. Horror movies are aimed at teenagers rather than adults regardless of ratings as evidenced by the fact that the major victims and/or protagonists of horror films tend to be teenagers. Then, I can think of another classic movie that would be classified as a horror movie, namely "Poltergeist". With merely a title like Poltergeist, you can already see the intent of supernatural horror. In the movie, a little girl is drawn from her bed into a purgatory realm between worlds, a boy is nearly eaten by a tree, and coffins with corpses emerge from the ground in the middle of a house. These are clearly terrible events that would frighten, thus, the movie is a horror movie by definition. To say that the only way a horror movie can occur is if it has an R rating is like saying all animated shows on television cannot reach a PG rating, which many do. Horror in the simple definition does not require disgusting mindless violence or immoral content to exist. The horror movies with lighter ratings merely try more to achieve their fright through psychological and emotional technique rather than mindless disgusting acts of violence or simply unrealistic adult sexual action. The best way to scare a person in my opinion is to let the person scare themselves through their own imagination. That is what these suspenseful horror movies are trying to accomplish and it really works. More of these PG-13 movies are receiving positive reviews than the sloppy gore-fest films that needed gore, sex, and drugs to boost themselves.

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