Apr
12
Staying Home on “Prom Night”
Filed Under Movies
PG-13 horror. A contradiction in terms if there ever was one. Yet the multiplexes are lousy with PG-13 horror flicks of late, the most recent being this weekend’s completely unnecessary “Prom Night” regurgitation.
For those of you with lives and don’t already know, the PG-13 rating came about in the mid-’80s. Steven Spielberg’s heart-rendering “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” and Joe Dante’s Christmas creature feature “Gremlins” (produced by Spielberg) stunned family audiences with their levels of on-screen violence. But because there was nary an “f-word” or a breast to spice up the carnage, both films were rated a mild PG.
Under fire for his splatter flicks posing as family fare, Spielberg appealed to the MPAA for a new rating — something that would come between PG and R. And PG-13 (”Parents strongly cautioned!”) was born. The rating essentially made PG meaningless, since even the G-rated “Planet of the Apes” has some mild profanity, bloody violence and man-ass. But there’s never been a large degree of consistency as far as film ratings go.
PG is the middle child of the ratings system. To paraphrase Tyler Durden, it “has no purpose or place.” PG-13 is the new black. That being said, PG-13 movies today are about as toothless as your average PG-rated family film from 25 years ago. PG-13 movies are just PG movies with a phony ID. They want to seem more grown up, but their fake beards aren’t fooling anyone.
Here we see the paradox of a PG-13 “horror” movie. A genuine horror film should have to be resubmitted to the MPAA at least a half-dozen times to finally get its rating changed from NC-17 to slightly de-fanged R. The only thing that’s scary about “Prom Night” is its intended audience: giggling, texting, seat-kicking adolescents. They don’t want to be scared, and if they’re actually seeing a remake of the crashing bore that is the original “Prom Night,” they don’t even really want to be entertained. They’re there for no reason whatsoever — not unlike PG-13 horror films.
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[…] work against its box office haul. Wussies who are taken in by Night’s earlier, safer, more PG-13 thrills and chills aren’t gorehounds. I saw a guy get eaten by a lawnmower in the red-banded trailer for the […]
[…] I’d never seen “The Gate.” It was one of the few horror movies a friend of mine in elementary school had seen, so he talked about it all the time. But it was never on my radar. I mean, it’s PG-13. We all know how I feel about horror movies rated PG-13. […]