Since it’s Spooky Season and all, we asked our Mutants if they thought that it was possible to make genuinely good and terrifying PG-13 horror flicks! So… is it?

Justin: It is, and I don’t think that answer’s going to be hotly debated this month. The more interesting answer is the approach a PG-13 horror film has to take, because there’s a trade-off when you give up the R. You can’t be as overtly gory or graphic, you can’t be flashing copious skin, and you’re going to have to limit the swears that characters say as they run for their lives.

So a good PG-13 horror movie leans into suspense, the terror of the unseen, the utterly creepy vibes, and the core of what actually scares us. It can be a little funny as a creature feature — see Gremlins, Drag Me To Hell, or Tremors. It can tell a spooky ooky ghost story, as with The Others or The Sixth Sense. It can prey upon a universal fear, as with Arachnophobia or Poltergeist. Or it can be a “gateway” movie for early horror fans, with titles such as The Monster Squad, The Gate, or Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. Or it can bank on unbelievable tension and great premises, such as with A Quiet Place. Haunted houses are also good options, since those bank more on atmosphere than gore, which includes titles such as 1408.

Actually, I’ve always been a proponent of the view that limitations make for more creative storytelling. And if you’ve limited your filmmakers to a PG-13, they can’t take the easy route with decapitations and over-the-top kills. They’ve got to scare you in some other ways, and that makes for far more interesting end products.

Sitting Duck: You’ll pardon me for remarking on what a silly question that is. Not only is horror possible without an R rating, but even PG-13 is overkill. Excellent horror films like The Uninvited and Night of the Demon (the 1957 movie starring Dana Andrews) came out when the Hays Code was still in effect. Were those movies to have an MPAA rating applied to them, they’d probably merit a PG at most, or maybe even a G. Though come to think of it, when was the last time a movie received a G rating? And remember how there was a time when it wasn’t particularly unusual for PG movies to feature nudity?

But back to the fallacy of the claim that effective horror requires an R rating. This appears to stem largely from the prevalence of gore and body horror in modern horror films. Now I have no problem with these per se. My own beloved Dark Gathering has its share of both. But ultimately they are individual components in the horror toolbox. And just as how not every handyman project requires a hammer or a screwdriver, not every horror story requires gore or body horror.

Drake: PG-13 horror? Impossible, I say! It cannot be done!

Except of course, it has. There have been quite a few PG-13 movies made, and some of them are quite good. The Others, for example, is one heck of a ghost story that relies on ambiance rather than full-on jump scares to tell its tale. There was no need for that movie to try to push any envelopes that would have had it categorized with an R rating, and it would have been a mistake to try.

And speaking of ghost stories, what about Poltergeist? There’s another PG-13 horror flick, albeit one that did draw some criticism at the time for really pushing the envelope of that rating.

Tremors is another good example from a completely different category of horror. While The Others is a supernatural tale, Tremors is just an old-fashioned creature feature that leaned into characters, action, and humor, and there was no reason for it to have an R rating, either. It’s one of those flicks that would probably be great as an introduction to horror for a younger crowd. The same could be said of Night of the Comet, that delightfully offbeat tale of a pair of sisters surviving a post-apocalyptic Los Angeles. I don’t think I would change anything about that movie, let alone alter it enough that it would warrant an R rating.

There are some sub-genres that don’t fit as well within the confines of PG-13, though. Slashers, for example, tend to be violent and gory, and taking those elements out turns them into something else altogether. On the whole, though, you can certainly work within the parameters of the PG-13 rating to make a good horror movie.

Or even a bad one. Jaws: The Revenge, anyone?