My wife and I have been trying to give our 10-year-old son a decent film education, which basically means that we all watch a movie together every Friday afternoon. We’ve shown him modern classics, actual classics, movies we grew up on, and other stuff we think he’d like or are important for him to see. So this coming weekend, I decided to show him the 1999 cyberpunk classic,** the Matrix.**
My wife objected. Vehemently.
She claims that the film is terrifying. Not because of the tension or violence - my kid can deal with that kind of stuff - but because of the existential horror, the implications that the world we live in is not real. She claims that she herself had never been as scared by a movie as she was by this one, and that there was no way I was going to expose my son to that kind of film.
Personally, I have no idea what she’s talking about. I found **the Matrix ** (the first one, of course; we’re not going to mention that the others exist) to be a fun science fiction romp, with several ideas that may have been new to mainstream cinema, but which I was familiar with from years of SF reading. And it’s not as if my kid’s unfamiliar with the concept of a virtual world, either - they’ve done **Matrix **rereads on several of his TV shows, including, I’m fairly certain, *SpongeBob *(and frankly, I’d think a long-term *SpongeBob *watcher like him would be immune to existential horror).
So what say you? Am I about to break my child’s mind? Does anyone else find the film legitimately frightening? Or is it just my wife’s mishegas?
There are some individual things I’d be concerned about - the tentacled flying robots might creep him out, and the baby with the tubes stuck in it is pretty disturbing - but the “existential horror” never occurred to me.
When I saw the thread title, I thought: no, it’s not scary, except maybe for a little kid.
You never know with kids what’s going to scare them. I haven’t seen the movie in years, but some of the scenes set in the ‘real’ world with people hooked up to big machines are pretty creepy.
10 year olds do not comprehend movies in the same way as adults. He’s unlikely to experience existential angst as a result of watching The Matrix. However, I’m not sure he’ll fully follow the plot line at his age. But you know him much better than any of us!
I think the Matrix would only be scary to an intellectual philosopher who worries a lot. For an average 10-year-old, he will just see outdated technology and cool action scenes.
Well, what has he seen so far? Has he seen Temple of Doom yet? One of my daughters jumped up screaming and ran out of the room when the heart scene came up. I was kinda surprised.
I don’t think you should fight this battle. Just move on to the next sci-fi classic. . . Has he seen Alien?
We showed The Matrix to ours girls a few months ago; they are 11 and 9. They loved it. It’s worth noting the 9-year-old is a bit timid regarding movies.
When my son was 9, I showed him Men in Black. I had always considered it a light comedy. It gave him nightmares to think anybody he meets could be an alien in disguise.
With kids, you never know what aspects of the film they will fixate on.
It’s definitely more of a “hard PG-13” than a serious “R” rated movie.
Ebert complained about the rating system for 20+ years and this is a good example.
I personally think The Matrix is far less scary than Temple of Doom, a movie that is rated PG-13. The existential fear the Matrix throws at us is nothing. Heck, I’d even let the kid see Inception, a movie about dreamland.
The same kid can also react differently at different stages or, heck, even on different days. The same can be said of adults, too. I think the mind has to be exactly ready to take in the concept suddenly and completely in order for a bit of background business to trigger such an unpleasant reaction.
To show you how individual kids can be, my sons used to rent Blade. They were about 15 and 11 at the time. My 8 year old daughter would sit with me on the sofa while it was on. I asked her if she was scared and she said “no.” I asked her again later, she said no again. Never had nightmares, turned out normal as hell kid.
The idea in The Matrix is essentially the same as Horton Hears a Who. Anyone who had an existential crisis because of The Matrix didn’t get it because The Matrix is particularly unique in presenting the concept that “the world may not be what it seems” but because The Matrix handled it so hamfistedly.
I haven’t seen The Matrix, but what’s scary is that your son is ten! I remember posting in the thread announcing his birth. And checking I see that it really was 2005.
The first time I encountered the “We’re all just someone else’s dream. What we call reality is a fiction” idea, I was about 12-13 or so and it freaked me right the hell out for a few days. Y’know the whole stupid-hippie “Wow man…that just blew his mind?” Yeah. I distinctly recall a few sleepless nights thinking “What if I fall asleep and that makes whoever’s dreaming us wake up and I vanish” or similar. That lasted maybe two days, tops.
I say, show your kid. If it freaks the kid out for a day or two, so much the better. Childhood is enhanced (and kids are strengthened) by the occasional bit of horror, exestential or otherwise.
