Jurassic Park for me. I had an amazing JP jumper when I was like…maybe 6. It was far too big for me but I loved dinosaurs. Naturally this meant I wanted to watch the film because…well I’m 6 and it’s got dinosaurs.
Ultimately I ended up watching it with my Mum and Dad. We got as far as the iconic T-Rex chase scene and I told them to turn it off. Didn’t go near the film for another few years.
I’ve now got my own 6 year old. There’s no scenario I could envisage where I even consider letting her watch a film as gory, tense and frightening as JP.
Not a movie, but it really traumatized me to the point I still see it today. When I was 5 or 6 I saw some PSA during children’s programming to get people to buckle up their children in a car. Some guy was driving, with his daughter in the back. She was showing him how she had learned to play a song on the recorder (the flute). Then he had to brake and I still see the flute rammed down her throat to this day. It was effective, though, as I am known to tell my kids to not run or play with something in their mouth.
It was the kid breaking into the substation to get his frisbee that was stuck in one of the insulators that did it for me. “Jimmmmmyyyy!!!” while smoke was pouring out of his shoes.
I’m American, but these are my examples:
- The Incredibles was the biggest offender in my childhood: it was sensory overload for me from the workplace scene to the jokes to the villain all done in a viciously brutal Pixar story formula.
- Despicable Me was another contender because that film I don’t consider friendly to kids now, because characters are jerks and the villains are the minor ones pulling all the strings (Miss Hattie and Mr. Perkins scared me badly).
- Tangled, mostly because of Mother Goethe verbally abusing Rapunzel and stabbing her boyfriend in the stomach only to get killed.
- Wreck-It Ralph also has everyone hating on Ralph for being a villain, Vanellope gets shoved into a puddle of chocolate by her own kind, Calhoun is an abusive bastard, Turbo doesn’t even belong in a movie meant for kids as a villain even though he dies a goofball later.
- Transformers: Age of Extinction, mostly because of Joshua Joyce abusing his role although the rest of the movie was okay.
- Marvel’s Avengers was fine, but Bruce Banner/Hulk and Loki were convincingly scary.
HONORABLE MENTIONS:
- The Boy and The Beast was a brutal coming-of-age film, but I saw it when I was a teenager.
- Black Panther, most overrated Marvel movie
- Moana, for an unpleasant fomula film
- Zootopia, worst movie ever made
You could say any film is going to scare me.
