A message-board acquaintance of mine saw “two kids who had to be under five” at 28 Weeks Later the other day.
WHAT THE FUCK?
I don’t understand what the hurry is to expose your kids to this stuff–they’ve got literally their whole lives to watch zombies eat people!
I am the biggest horror fan you’ll ever meet, and yet I wasn’t one of these third graders who was watching Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th movies. (That was a popular-kid thing to do, oddly enough.) I was the kid who pretended to be asleep at sleepovers when the kids would watch Poltergeist II. I think I saw my first rated-R movie, The Lost Boys, when I was in eighth grade or so. I saw The Shining early on in high school at some point, and didn’t see my first real, gory, unabashed horror film, Nightbreed, until I was a sophomore. And that was fine!
I don’t know if these “parents” legitimately think their toddlers will enjoy watching horror movies, or if they think it’d be fun to freak them out, or if they haven’t given the kids any consideration and want to see the movies themselves and it’s cheaper to traumatize them than get a sitter. I just know it’s not the right thing to do to your kids.
I saw quite a number of little kids, couldn’t have been more than 4 or 5, at Spider-Man 3. I’d say more, but I’m sure it’d be interpreted as racism.
Spidey I can kind of understand. I can’t even imagine what it’s like as a parent of young kids when a Spidey movie comes out–I’m sure it feels like “either I give up and take them or I throw myself out a window.” I still think you should be a non-idiot and not take them, but I can kind of understand it.
No four year old is saying “Mama, I wanna see the zombies!”
Heh.
I saw The Shining when I was five. I remember my sister, who was younger (!), asking my parents if the guy who got the axe in the chest got paid.
“Of course, honey,” they answer.
“But how does he spend the money if he’s dead???” my sister responds.
Gotta tell ya, my kids are going to at least be old enough to know the blood is fake before they see The Shining or any of its brethren.
When I went to see FREDDIE VS. JASON, I swear at first I thought I wandered into the FINDING NEMO theater by mistake.