Why are some movies rated R when they are not scary?

Answer 1

The rating of a movie has virtually nothing to do with how scary it is. Horror movies are not given the R rating because they are super-scary. They are given the R rating because they have content that most parents would not want their young children to see, such as: violence and gore, frightening images (such as demons and monsters and evil spirits), drug use, foul language, nudity and/or sexual acts.

Obviously, drug use, profanity and sex do not make a movie scary. But violence, gore, and images of demons and monsters do not necessarily make a movie scary, either. There are tons of horror movies out there that are loaded with violence and gore and frightening images, but are not scary at all because they are poorly written, poorly directed, poorly acted and poorly edited. For example, all of the Saw movies except the first one. These movies are positively saturated with blood and gore, but they are not scary. They're just gross.

By themselves, bloodshed and monsters do not make a movie scary. What makes a movie scary is the suspense, the feeling of dread, and the fear of the unknown. Talented horror film makers know that what scares people most is not monsters and demons and violence, but the unknown. That is why ghost movies like Paranormal Activityare so effective. They frighten the viewer by making him/her afraid of what's going to happen, not what is happening.

For example, very early on in Paranormal Activity, we learn that a demon is haunting Katie. But we never actually SEE the demon. We see it moving things around, and we see its shadow, and we even see its footprints, but we never see the monster itself. The fact that it's unknown -- the fact that we don't know what it looks like, or where it comes from, or what it's thinking, or how/why it chose Katie -- makes it scary.

In fact, while Paranormal Activity is rated R, it only got the R rating because of profanity. This movie scared millions of people (including me) but it has very little violence. The only violence is at the very end, and it is mostly implied (we see Micah all bloody and dead, but we don't see how he got that way).

That is why good horror movies can make something as mundane as a door opening by itself, or a creepy noise in the dark, or a dark shadow hovering over someone's bed, absolutely terrifying. What's scary is the idea that SOMETHING evil is out there, but we don't know exactly what it is, or what it will do to us.

Some of the least scary horror movies out there are rated R, and conversely, some of the scariest horror movies are rated PG-13. For example, The Ring, The Grudge, Insidious, The Eye, Cloverfield, Drag Me to Hell (although an Unrated version of Drag Me to Hell is available). Poltergeist is actually rated PG. These movies don't have much (or any) violence or gruesome images (or drug use, sex or profanity) so they get the PG-13 rating. But they're very scary movies, because they instill a sense of dread in the viewer.

The Ring and The Grudge, for example, have almost no violence at all. The monsters in The Grudge are just a blue little boy who meows, and a blue, long-haired woman who walks all weird. Yet these seemingly silly and innocuous images are very, very scary in the context of the movie. We know that they are evil and malevolent, but exactly what they do to people is a mystery. We see that they commit violence (they ripped the jaw off the home health worker) but we don't see it happening. The implied violence is actually scarier than any explicit violence could be.

Also terrifying is the fact that the ghosts kill you and then apparently keep you trapped in the curse with them forever. We don't know exactly how that happens, but that's what makes it so scary. The ghosts do SOMETHING really bad to you, but we don't know what, exactly, and that unknown evil is scarier than anything tangible like torture or violent death.