I have a five and a seven year old. I have seen the preview for Cloverfield and it doesn’t look like a kids movie. I was surprised to see that it was rated PG. Also, it is supposed to be a Godzilla-type movie which I would say are kid-safe.
What’s the verdict? If it isn’t too scary and people aren’t being eaten I might consider taking my kids.
My seven year old (6 at the time) did enjoy the Transformers movie. How do they compare?
I think this is one of those movies that terrifies adults, and children probably wouldn’t understand entirely. It doesn’t have any particularly graphic scenes… just inference and glimpses for the conclusive, adult, mind. Mostly, the viewer has to fill in the bad parts.
I probaly wouldn’t take very young children to see it, but for entirely different reasons… they just wouldn’t find it very interesting or probably not even understand it. It’s not a kids movie, and I found it quite visceral and disturbing, but only because of my age and circumstances.
No, this is not a kid’s movie. Even though it’s rated PG there is some graphic gore and I think it is the kind of scary that would give kids nightmares. Also, the shaky camera has been making some adults motion sick, you don’t want to have a couple young kids puking in the theater.
I disagree that it’s very gory. A couple of bloody moments but more in a war-movie sort of way than a horror-movie sort of way. But that is why I don’t think this movie is good for kids at all. While Transformers is big dumb fun, Cloverfield is cold and chaotic. Although it may just go over younger kids heads, I think slightly older ones could find the “realistic” horror and chaos very disturbing. You and I know that a big monster in NYC is ridiculous, but the movie does a good job of making it seem real, probably too real for kids.
If you’re looking for a family-friendly Godzilla-type horror time, I would heartily recommend **The Host **(on DVD). I know I’m one of the last people in the world to see it, but I thought it was pretty nifty, with some truly touching character development (which is entirely absent from Cloverfield).
No nudity, and really not all that much blood, but the movie isn’t one that would be appreciated by kids, I don’t think. The story is actually rather adult–a young man and woman who are in love but have a hard time admitting it to themselves. There’s nothing cartoony about it, even if it isn’t all that horrifying.
To a kid, I think it would just be random scenes of people running around with no sort of connecting logic. So either it would be really boring or really frightening, but with no redeeming story to make it worth it.
IMDB says it’s “Rated PG-13 for violence, terror and disturbing images.” Which is accurate.
Really crappy synopsis and spoilers below, can’t remember the tags.
Guy makes tape of the morning after he sleeps with a hot chick. His friends throw a party for him, filming it over his hot chick tape. Then, an explosion! Or something. And the Statue of Liberty’s head is hurled in Manhattan for some reason. RUUUUN! The guys and girls head to a bridge out of town on foot. Bridge is wiped out by the monster, killing a member of the central group. The gang continues on to rescue the main guy’s main squeeze, and are attacked by a horde of large vicious bugs in a subway. A chick gets bit up pretty good in the fight, and later explodes bloodily behind a sheet in a field hospital. The group continues on to find the love interest, whose apartment building was fucked up by the monster , impaled on something and apparently dying. Tearful reunion, squelching noise as they hoist her off the thing that impaled her, and she doesn’t bleed to death for some reason. Yay! The group makes its way to an evacuation point and the black chick presumably gets away safely. They wind up in Central Park, where the camera guy is mauled or partially eaten by the monster and dies. Guy and love interest hide under a bridge, freak out, and are crushed to death as the bridge collapses.
And there’s tension and suspense and lurve and an appalling lack of flaming hobos stumbling out of the darkness, yada yada. Definitely wouldn’t take youngsters. The good stuff would scare and the “I love her but I can’t tell her!” stuff would bore the hell out of them.
Technically speaking, probably not. There’s little objectionable content (violence, nudity, gore, language, etc.). However I don’t know if a kid would really enjoy it though. It would either scare or bore the crap out of them, not to mention the possible motion sickness.
My advice is to do what we did with our daughter: find a friend to take the kids to see something you would never want to see with them (in our case The Chipmunks) and keep the movie to the grownups.
I probably shouldn’t have taken me, a 30 something adult, to see it.
What I mean is… it had an effect on me…kids, probably not so much.
I didn’t say it was very gory. The gore is actually sparse but the few minutes of gore are of the type to be very disturbing to a young child.
They would be either incredibly bored or terribly scared, i wouldn’t take a kid to see it.
I saw it tonight, and there was a young kid, maybe seven or so, in front of me. At the end, he turned to his dad and said,
Everyone died, daddy!
The outrage in his voice was hilarious. Clearly, the kid had definite ideas about how movies were supposed to end, and this one had gotten it all wrong.
[QUOTE=Dying Butterfly]
IMDB says it’s “Rated PG-13 for violence, terror and disturbing images.” Which is accurate.
Really crappy synopsis and spoilers below, can’t remember the tags.
Guy makes tape of the morning after he sleeps with a hot chick. His friends throw a party for him, filming it over his hot chick tape. Then, an explosion! Or something. And the Statue of Liberty’s head is hurled in Manhattan for some reason. RUUUUN! The guys and girls head to a bridge out of town on foot. Bridge is wiped out by the monster, killing a member of the central group. The gang continues on to rescue the main guy’s main squeeze, and are attacked by a horde of large vicious bugs in a subway. A chick gets bit up pretty good in the fight, and later explodes bloodily behind a sheet in a field hospital. The group continues on to find the love interest, whose apartment building was fucked up by the monster , impaled on something and apparently dying. Tearful reunion, squelching noise as they hoist her off the thing that impaled her, and she doesn’t bleed to death for some reason. Yay! The group makes its way to an evacuation point and the black chick presumably gets away safely. They wind up in Central Park, where the camera guy is mauled or partially eaten by the monster and dies. Guy and love interest hide under a bridge, freak out, and are crushed to death as the bridge collapses.
[QUOTE]
That was the best movie review ever.
Hope the above link helps. The only thing that would make me hesitate about taking my six year-old is the scene where Hud goes around asking everybody “Hey, did you know Rob and Beth did it?” Perhaps I can arrange a trip to the bathroom…
Regardless, Sophia would love this movie. I can hear her now: “Daddy, can we watch the ‘monster-destroying-New-York-movie’ again? It was awesome! I want to see the scene with the spiders! Please?” This could very well take the place of War of the Worlds (the ‘scary-monster-alien-robot-movie’) as her favorite action movie ever.
Yeah, she’d be scared but she enjoys scary movies and monsters and stuff.
covering her eyes “I can’t watch this part, it’s too scary.”
“Well, I’ll just turn it off then…”
“NO, Daddy!”
My thoughts exactly. They’ll definitely get antsy during the prolonged, horror-free intro.
For sure. It lasts about a half an hour and a lot of adults on this board disliked it. I personally loved the intro and the whole Beth/Rob subplot, but I know a kid wouldn’t “get” it.
Also, as was said earlier, it’s not just about the gore–it’s more the sense of dread/suspense. Not a typical monster movie. I’d hesitate myself, but I suppose it depends on the kids.
The scene where The girl, er…Janis from “Mean Girls” but blanking on her name in the movie…dies might be upsetting for younger viewers. I think it’s the type of thing that would have skeeved me as a kid. Hell, it was skeevey for me as a grown up!
The Host terrified me and I had to cover my eyes at several points, especially when Gang-du is captured and restrained and the end when the monster is killed.
I wouldn’t take children to Cloverfield, it was very intense and the small amount of gore that was shown was pretty icky. The bite marks, deep and brimming with dark blood, made me squirm.