Slasher Movies Weren't Made To Be PG-13 Films

Today Blumhouse announced that upcoming ‘Black Christmas’ remake (Part Deux) will be rated PG-13 and that’s a huge bummer. After a spoily trailer that at best didn’t blow anyone away and at worst turned some people off entirely (I’m pretty sure that isn’t what trailers are supposed to do), this seems like the final nail in the coffin for anyone who had hope this would be a faithful remake.

I can’t begin to understand the mindset here. You managed to get the IP of an old school slasher film like this and decide to use that to make a ‘Truth or Dare’ type film for teenagers to catch on Friday night? It’s one thing to make a PG-13 horror film. Hell, that works great in some cases. It’s another thing entirely to take a relatively grody slasher flick from the 70’s and remake it into a teen flick.

I’m usually a very positive person about these things. This article actually started in defense of PG-13 horror.

Then I dug a little deeper.

In my initial argument, I made this list of all the decent to great PG-13 horror films of the 2000’s.

There are twenty of them. Now, I’m sure depending on preference you can find more or even less (because even some of these films are stretches) but let me put it to you this way….

Over the past 19 years, there have been a total of sixty five PG-13 rated horror films that garnered a rating on IMDB of 6.0 or higher. You know how many of those movies are slashers? Three.

‘Happy Death Day’, ‘Happy Death Day 2U’ and ‘The Final Girls’. That’s it. What do you think the percentages for success are here? For three movies in nineteen years?

I leave it at this. Yes, there is a chance ‘Black Christmas 2019’ is inventive and charming and ends up shocking the shit out of everyone but that is extremely and statistically unlikely.

We’re right as fans to be bummed out, pissed off and disappointed. The PG-13 rating means there’s not going to be much killing, sex, gore, nudity, drug use or slasher horror in this slasher film. You know, one about a guy who makes sex calls to a bunch of cursing college girls using drugs and alcohol before they end up getting slaughtered one by one. Fuck me, right?

I know we all want to be positive about movies and support horror. That being said there needs to be a balance. If you pretend everything is great than nothing truly will be.