Since I have already confessed to still being afraid of the abominable snowman on “Rudolph” and Godzilla’s roar, I figure I might as well extend this theme a bit further to all things scary (or at least potentially scary)-- I have noticed that parents bring some pretty small children to see movies like the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Some scenes in Harry Potter and Pirates of the Caribbean would probably have scared me when I was a child, but maybe that just demonstrates that I am a total wuss! (Heck, I was frightened of some of the monsters in the old Johnny Quest cartoon!)
I have also noticed overhearing pretty young kids talk about watching gory zombie-type movies and enjoying them! I think I (and I think most of my friends!) would have scared out of my pitiful little mind watching such stuff when I was young! It would be bad enough watching zombie movies in my adult years!
So, do you think that kids today are just much harder to scare than they used to be? Or do they just put up a brave front, and then have nightmares later?
Oow Oow Oow Oow Oow! I know!
It’s because kids today are able to see things as “just a movie.”
I work in a library and whenever a particularly young kid rents a horror movie I ask “You’re going to watch this?” The stock answer is always “It’s just a movie!”
Kids today rule! 
I agree with Justin. When our kids were little, we would always prepare them for anything scarey or violent that was going to happen, and we would discuss afterwards how they did the special effects. The biggest bit was RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK when it first came out; we saw it first and then took them (ages 10 and 8, roughly) and we talked about the special/trick photography for the melting faces etc.
I STILL won’t see most scary movies, but my daughter (14) loves 'em. We were pretty strict about what she could watch when she was a bit younger - my husband and I would pre-screen a lot of movies, or at least talk to friends who’d seen them and get some insight into what she was going to see. I remember when Matrix 2 came out, I questioned a pal about the sex scenes. It wasn’t that I didn’t want her to see any sex, I just wanted to be sure that there was no violence linked to the sex, you know? So while I’m carefully quizzing people and worrying about the effects of violence, my daughter comes home from a friend’s house and tells me she’s just seen The Faculty. :eek:
Since then, she’s amassed quite the horrifying DVD collection - vampire movies, slashers, zombies, action-thrillers. She doesn’t seem inclined to act out what she sees, so I’ve pretty much given up. She does still make “ew” noises when there’s anything sexual though.