The Challenge: The Top 5 Scariest PG or PG-13 Horror Movies
‘The Challenge’ is a new series where Greg Ehrhardt, editor and columnist for the blog, challenges Ken Jones on his cinematic knowledge to better inform readers about the deep catalog of movies we can enjoy today.
In light of Disney’s Haunted Mansion releasing in theaters this week, the challenge to Ken was coming up with the top 5 scariest PG or PG-13 horror movies in movie history!
I directed Ken to stick to movies that are more supernatural/ghost based and gave him some leeway to deviate, given the slim pickings. I ruled Jaws out due to a debate about whether Jaws is a horror movie.
Read Ken’s answer below and tell us on Twitter (@onscreenblog) how well you think he did.
Ooooh, this is a good one. I thought there were more of them than there were. Of course, I could’ve gone with a full list of movies made before the modern MPAA rating system started in 1968, but that felt like cheating, so I stayed away from the outright classics.
5. KILLER KLOWNS FROM OUTER SPACE (1988)
Rating: PG-13
I’m not going to lie, I haven’t seen this since I was a kid and caught it on HBO, but this is what they call a core memory. I remember the evil clowns being evil-looking and demented, they’re killers, after all, but I vividly remember one particular scene in a police station where one of the Klowns uses the sheriff as a puppet, complete with his hand up the sheriff’s back, making his mouth move like a ventriloquist. Let me tell you, that’s the kind of thing that sticks with you when you’re 8.
4. THE RING (2001)
Rating: PG-13
The American remake that launched a thousand J-Horror remakes. This film starring Naomi Watts was unnerving from the very beginning. Even though it quickly became dated because a central plot element revolves around VHS tapes, the horror and imagery in this Gore Verbinski film will haunt you. I will never forget two things from this movie. First, the footage on the videotape and how it felt genuinely malevolent like it was something you should not be watching. Second, the TV scene at the end.
3. INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS (1978)
Rating: PG
Back-to-back remakes. The 70s were a great decade of film, especially for paranoia and conspiracy. This film uses those themes perfectly to sell this sci-fi horror story about an alien invasion. The city of San Francisco slowly but surely gets taken over by pod people replacing the regular denizens of the city until only a few normal people remain. A small band of people against an entire city trying to capture them, the odds are not in their favor. The ending of this film is downright chilling. One of the rare examples of a remake being superior to the original.
2. DRAG ME TO HELL (2009)
Rating: PG-13
Poor Christine. All she wanted to do was secure that promotion to assistant branch manager at the bank. She picks the wrong day and the wrong client to start to show some assertiveness and initiative and ends up cursed by an old woman and has three days to figure out how to lift the curse or be dragged to hell by a demon. Post-Spider-Man, Sam Raimi returned to his Evil Dead roots for this one, with a little bit of camp and schlock mixed with some great scares and some gross-out moments.
1. POLTERGEIST (1982)
Rating: PG
When you can’t get Steven Spielberg to direct your PG film because he’s contractually blocked from doing so, naturally, you go and get the man who made The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Tobe Hooper. Wait, what? Spielberg essentially served as co-director, even though he wasn’t credited.
The Freeling family moves into a new home in a housing development and almost immediately begins to experience strange, supernatural events. Poltergeists (ghosts) are haunting their home, and there happens to be a portal to the dimension of the spirit realm in the closet of the youngest daughter, Carol Ann.
This legitimately scary movie was initially rated R by the MPAA, but Spielberg and Hooper appealed and got the rating changed to PG. There are few lines in horror as iconic as “They’re heeeeeeeeere.”
Read other episodes of The Challenge here: