What is your take on letting your kid watch horror movies?

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At what age was it ok in your opinion for them to watch them and which ones etc. The 10 year was told she couldn't watch Final Destination and yet she went to her room and watched part of it anyway. Mom & Dad grounded her off the t.v. I feel she's 10 going on 11 (Dec. 21st) IMO give her some lee way. So what if she sees something scary. Sure it could give nightmares which could be a problem but the deaths in those movies are so outrageous and While no the horror characters can't come back from the dead there are bad people out there and killers. Sadly giving my view I was put down WE DON'T NEED YOUR VIEW! So I got up from the breakfast table and went off to my room. They HATE when I give my view or opinion on my little sisters!

That particular movie series has no redeeming qualities - it's only watched because! the deaths are so ludicrous. While I haven't agreed with some of your parents' described actions in the past, this time I'm going to side with them.

Again, there's no lesson or moral in those films - the plot is "your death is scheduled and if you sidestep it, you're gonna die even more horribly". Guaranteed to cause nightmares and negative worries sand toughts even during the day for some people. They do nothing but glorify death.

AT my age - and obviously at your's, we know, and know deeply, that the message in those movies is B*S*. Your parents decided your sister wasn't old enough or mature enough to figure that out on her own yet, and so they made a law. She can be insulted. She can go watch it somewhere else, or later in her life, but your parents made a law for that moment, and with reason.

She broke that law - and broke it in their own house and even on the same night - which is prettymuch the same as giving them the finger to their face. NOT cool. They have to be able to make laws and have them followed, because for the most part, parents know better - they've been on the earth longer than their kids - and their laws are for safety of their children.

That makes since. Ya she did "break the law" as you put it but that's the 10 year old for you. She lies at times and is rude a lot aswell. Guess it's a phase.

When a child is old enough to watch a scary movie depends on that individual child's personality. Is he or she prone to paranoia? Does he or she have nightmares easily? Does he or she have a good grasp of what is real and what isn't? When I was little, I wasn't allowed to watch scary movies, but plenty of kids my age were. My ten-year-old friend was upset that I couldn't watch Chucky with her. She had grown up watching scary movies, and she only saw them as a thrilling form of entertainment and nothing more. I saw my first horror movie, Cujo, by accident when I was thirteen or so. I actually loved it, and now horror is my favorite movie genre. My fifteen-year-old sister, on the other hand, has problems with paranoia, so she avoids horror movies and my mom helps her to steer clear of them.

I'm kinda on the fence about this one. My TV/movie viewing was almost completely uncensored as a child. Outside of porn, the only movie I remember my parents not allowing me to watch was Faces of Death (still haven't seen it, but, meh). In some ways, this was a good thing because the stigma was removed so I was not inclined to sneak around or anything. They were there to answer questions and make sure that I knew what was acceptable in real life and what was not. I did happen to be a very mature child, an old soul if you will, so I was able to handle most of what I saw. On the flip side, some of the horror movies I watched did give me nightmares and I can certainly understand a parent wanting to prevent their child/ren from being scared or from being exposed to mature material.

Bottom line, I think it all depends on the child. Some are ready and some are not. Usually the parents know what and when their child should or should not be watching. I have one child with very mature viewing tastes - not necessarily violence, but moreso in adult themes. I'm ok with him watching certain material intended for older viewers. My other child is the opposite. She is sometimes scared of Elmo. Each kid is different.

Individual. My first horror movie left me with very irrational fears and was another feed for my extreme anxiety.

If I watch a horror movie now I often have violent scenes of it replay over and over in my head. I've had times when I've had bad dreams and had trouble differentiating between reality and the dream. I avoid most all movies except for children's movies and documentaries -- but I don't really like movies in the first place. I just find them distressing for whatever reason and mostly confusing because the dialogue is hard to understand with the background music often played.

Obviously showing me a horror movie was a bad idea. Parents of aspies should seriously present all the facts about horror movies -- how they're made, how supernatural creatures are based on myths, etc and why people like to watch them before letting their child find one.

I disagree with people dying as a form on entertainment...it desensitizes us to human suffering and murder.

really depends on the child. my mom took me to see a couple movies when i was around 9-10 yrs old which changed my childhood forever. they were the amityville horror and friday the 13th. i could not shower nor sit all the way down on the toilet for years our yearly 4-H camp trip was a nightmare after that. i was a highly imaginative child and these movies terrorized me. in my moms defense, she didnt know what kind of movies they were so its not like she was trying to ruin my childhood. i still get creeped out alone in the woods heh.

my oldest son is much like me, and would suffer nightmares from even much more mild movies. we only occassionally let him watch scary movies, and only with us. he loves zombie movies tho. he has seen all the resident evil movies. the resident evil games tho, he cant play them, he gets too scared lol, even with all of us in the room with him.

my 6 yr old is a lot like his dad and he can watch scarier movies than i or his brother could at his age. he doesnt have the drama queen gene =)

i think genre really matters too. a slasher film is much different than a psychological thriller or a zombie flick. some kids can tolerate a zombie movie but would get nightmares from a more realistic horror movie, other kids are the opposite. lately, there is a whole category of movies that is extreme gore, things like the saw movies, house of 1000 corpses, wrong turn, etc. i dont like those kinds myself, and wouldnt want my children watching them either until at least 16 or so.

i really like the final destination movies =) whether they are appropriate for a 10 yr old depends on the child and the parents beliefs. i myself wouldnt worry about any of my children at 10 watching one of that series, they are more supernatural than realistic, and not overly gory. but if the parents say no, then no it is, or suffer the consequences.

Me too, that's one reason why I rarely if ever watch the news, and have totally discouraged my son from watching the news when his father does. The way in which prime time TV news programmes attract viewers with photos and film of real people really dying, ill, wounded, suffering, crying, and of real dead bodies is absolutely awful. Real people really dying as entertainment; the modern version of arenas and gladiators.

Fiction films on the other hand in which the people are not really ill, dying, wounded, or suffering, in which the blood isn't real, are in my opinion often very healthy vehicules for projection of fears, understanding and accepting of the scarier things in life, anger, and hate, and so on. They are also sometimes very powerful exposures of things we dare not name, etc.

I probably wouldn't let my 11 year old son watch Final Destination, but I'm not sure why.

I have let him watch Alien, Aliens, Dune, Excalibur, Dark City, Memento, The Prestige, Brazil, The Rocky Horror Show, Shaun of the Dead, a 3-4 hour TV production of Macbeth, ( which he absolutely insisted onwatching all of, aged 6 ), and various other films equally "dark" and/or grisly, but not yet "28 Days Later", "The Thing", "Prince of Darkness", "The Exorcist", or "The Ring", for example, because I feel as if something about those would be too "adult"/difficult for him to understand/frame so that they don't give him nightmares, ( "The Exorcist" gave me nightmares for months after watching it aged 18 ).

Oddly enough he found Mel Brooks' "Young Frankenstein" scary, and was very scared reading Conan Doyle's "A Study in Scarlet" ( Sherlock Holmes ), so much he stopped reading it, and needed the light on for a few nights running.

He said that the book was scarier because he could imagine anything. And the Mel Brooks because there was actually nothing really horrible on screen, so he kept thinking of stuff.

Oh yes, haven't let him watch "Sixth Sense" yet either.

He was obsessed with "Jurassic Park" for about a year after watching it and getting pretty scared aged 5 or so. He used to watch it over and over again.

But the film which got him most upset in his whole life was "Stuart Little II" at the cinema, aged 4, when the super little plane crashes and is thrown in the bin.
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I'm a highly imaginative person like many of the previous posters, so for me, I steer clear of horror movies. The scenes pop in my head at the most inopportune times (like when hubby is away on a business trip) and it causes me to nearly have a panic attack, so I try to stay away.

My parents like the crime shoes (CSI, etc.). When I go over there, I have to leave the room. While they are very intriguing, the dramatization is too much for me. However, I really do enjoy watching the true crime shows. Maybe it's because you know the outcome. Maybe it's because there are no really dramatizations...either way, I steer clear of any type of dramatized horror or suspense. If I don't, I pay the price. I will steer my children clear of it as well until I know they are capable of handling it and are mature enough for it. For my kids, that will be awhile. They all have some level of anxiety.

My 5 year old has chosen to be Predator for Halloween. He's watched the original movie because there's nothing in it that's any worse than an X-men movie.

However, thriller type movies that showcase great human suffering, like the movie Seven for example, are totally not OK. I don't know when they will be, but it won't be for a while.

My son is this way, too - we watched a children's movie (The Secret of Kells, which we quite enjoyed) the other day, and a single mildly scary image (the fairy girl is attacked by a spirit) has him up at night. He carries upsetting images or memories with him for quite a bit of time.

It sounds like you have a lot of issues with your parents about how they're raising your sister. To be honest, my instinct as a mom is to tell you to butt out. But instead I'll suggest that if you really feel they're being too strict with her and want to have a positive effect, you work on how your present your case. Right now, it sounds like they're annoyed with you and that means you can't be effective. If you work on presenting a logical, well-reasoned argument that takes their point of view into account and respects their feelings as parents, your words might carry more weight.

I am another highly imaginative, sensitive person who absolutely cannot watch those type of movies. Graphic visual images can get stuck in my head for years feeding my anxiety. When my sons were little the scary bits of movies were often their favourite. They were both extremely logical, and they had no problem separating what they saw in movies from reality (not that we were letting them watch horror films, I also don't like gratuitous violence as entertainment and don't feel it is appropriate for kids in general, but I am referring to the scary parts in Star Wars, Harry Potter etc.). But suddenly just this summer one of my sons is suddenly highly sensitive to what he watches (can't sleep, repetitive images in his head, intrusive thoughts etc.) and we have had to cut back on any viewing that is even moderately dramatic. I think his imagination took a giant leap forward and so he now has the ability to generalize from a scary part in a movie to all the "what if's" if similar things happened in real life, so now anything even a little bit scary has the potential to bother him a lot.

So my answer is that it depends on the child.

I think we need to let kids be kids.

Horror has no part in a happy childhood. They will have many years to fill their heads with gruesome images - both from Hollywood and the nightly news. Let them be children, and leave them some semblance of innocence. I think we have lost all perspective as a society on what is appropriate for children.

Now, if someone were to make a horror film in which all the Bratz dolls were slaughtered by Honour Roll Geek girls - THAT I would let my kids watch

Hear, hear.