"Our Mother Was Royally Pissed" — 27 Movies That People Were Allowed To Watch Way Too Young That Absolutely Left Them Scarred For Life
Recently, Reddit user u/Mandee_707 took to popular subreddit r/movies to ask people what movies they were allowed to see at a young age that left them traumatized. I feel like we all have at least one...so, here are some of the best answers (including some really great films)!
1."The Exorcist, when I was 7. My mom tricked me by saying, 'It’s about a little girl like you!' Once the whole thing was over, she turned around, looked at me, and with her most serious voice said to me, 'Now you know what happens if you misbehave.'"
"[I saw] The Exorcist at age 9. F—k that, I had to sleep with the light on for I don't know how long."
"I saw it at 11, and I’m still traumatized. I can’t even look at a scene from that movie. Now as an adult, I love horror movies and watch many with no issues, but I will never watch that movie again."
2."I was probably the target audience's age when I saw it, but Disney's Pinocchio (1940) gave me thalassophobia and many many nightmares."
3."Evil Dead 2 when I was 7. [It's] not that scary when you're older, but man, when you're young, it [can] cause plenty of sleepless nights!"
4."When I was about 3, my mom was out running errands so it was just me and my dad. Chucky (Child's Play) was playing on the TV, and he thought it was going to be fine. My mom came home to me having an absolute meltdown because I was so terrified. My dad still thinks it’s hilarious, haha."
5."Courage the Cowardly Dog. I know [it was a] show on Cartoon Network [and was] for kids, but it still gave me nightmares."
6."My mom let us watch The Rocky Horror Picture Show thinking it was a scary movie. My brother was 5. We're a little weird."
"I hope, though, that at many dinnertimes, you all yelled out, 'MEATLOAF, AGAIN?!?' :)"
7."I was 4 or 5 when The Wizard of Oz was on TV late [at night]. I got up and saw the Wicked Witch of the West do the 'I'm melting!' bit. My dad could not stop laughing when I, at my great aunt's funeral a month later, asked when she would melt. I was assured real people did not melt, especially not evil ones. LOL."
8."I watched The Shining when I was about 9 and my brother was 12. The scary lady in the bathtub traumatized me for years. OMG, I haven't watched it since, but I read the book as an adult, and it was even scarier in my mind."
9."It's more like a short film, but Michael Jackson's "Thriller" music video. I was only about 2 or 3 at the time."
10."Critters. My babysitter’s teenage daughter was watching it where all us kids could see and watch, too. I was about 5 or 6. I remember a guy being pulled under his truck at night and eaten by the 'critters.' Thirty-plus years later and I still hate having to walk next to a vehicle at night and sometimes still hop in [the car] from a few feet away if I let the thought creep in too deep."
11."My dad actually forced, and I mean forced, me to watch Halloween at age 6. I tried to hide in a pillow during the scary scenes, but he took it from me. Then he told me after the movie, 'I think I saw Michael Myers once in my childhood home, watching me from the end of the hallway...' I'm 31 now and still can't sleep with any doors in the room open (closet, hallway, etc.) because I want the extra chance to hear someone enter, and I'm also certain I can always see someone standing juuuuust out of view in the shadows, watching me and waiting."
"I also sleep completely covered ever since then (like head to toe), and my friends make fun of me for looking like a burrito. I always half-joke, 'Yeah, it'll protect me from the serial killers, though,' lol."
12."The Birds. I was often convinced that if I opened the door to the extra room upstairs in my parents' house, it would be full of birds."
13."Home Alone was sold out, so they took me to Jacob's Ladder."
"Oh man, I saw that when I was 25 and felt traumatized."
14."Jurassic Park for me. I was 'age appropriate' at the time (8 or 9), but it still scared the utter sh*t out of me. However, while dinosaurs haunted my dreams for a while, at least they were in fact NOT real, so I was able to get over it."
15."I was, like, 5 or 6 when Jurassic Park came out, and I somehow convinced my parents to take me to see it in theaters, but I didn't really have any issues with it, I loved it. What really gave me nightmares a few years later for some reason was Mars Attacks! The aliens' ray guns turning people into bright red and green skeletons freaked me out."
"Also, the whole 'transplanting a woman's head onto the body of a dog' thing, and vice-versa, with a bit a blood dripping from the sew marks on the neck, was a special kind of nightmare fuel. The worst part, though, might have been the pure joy the aliens took in murdering everyone. That the movie was a comedy in a way made it scarier than if they had played it straight."
16."Not horror, but my mom rented Pulp Fiction when I was, like, 10? And we were watching it, and pretty early on when Vincent and Jules are comparing a foot rub to going down on a woman (I had only the vaguest idea what that meant), I excused myself, saying, 'I don’t think I’m old enough for this movie.' My mom agreed."
17."My sister and I were 8 and 10 and [were] dropped of at a matinee that was supposed to be Disney shorts, but ended up being Hitchcock's Psycho."
"[When I watched Psycho], I was 6. The scary part for me was Mrs. Bates in the basement."
"Psycho...the scene where the investigator gets stabbed on the stairs."
18."The first R-rated movie I watched was Letters from Iwo Jima. I might have been maybe 10 years old and had an interest in World War II, as my grandfather was a Marine in the Pacific. That scene where the Japanese blew themselves up with grenades was a lot to process for someone of that age."
19."[It was] 1994 — The Stand. My mom was out of town dealing with her sick mom, and my dad put it on for me, 9, my sister, 11, and my brother, 6. [The Stand] f*cked us all up in different ways. My sister called our mom at midnight crying and begging her to come home. Our mother was royally pissed."
20."Passion of the Christ at 7 years old. Worst Easter ever."
21."War of the Worlds with Tom Cruise. Even when I was 7, I was pretty ok with violence and destruction on film so my parents thought it would be ok, but that film gave me nightmares and kept me up at night for years."
"What terrified me was the pure psychological horror of being utterly helpless in a situation, like when the aliens turned up when the people are boarding the ferry and you know that everyone there is simply dead and there is nothing anyone can do about it."
22."Blair Witch. I was told by my parents it was a documentary."
23."Alien, in first grade. That was dumb, Dad."
24."Not parents, but the first time I was left alone overnight with my older brother, he put on Aliens. And once it was over, he put on The Thing. I was maybe 7? Yeah, I didn't sleep that night."
25."The first movie my sister and I got to watch was Silence of the Lambs. We were, like, 5? [Our] parents thought it was an award-winning nature film — a friend had loaned them a VHS copy. My sister would NOT stop screaming."
"I predicted that Hannibal would steal the guard’s face before it happened. I didn’t get scared of the film at all. I ended up getting VERY interested in medicine, anatomy, and dissection, though. My parents found this encouraging and promoted my interests."
26."I was born in '75, and by 9 or 10 years old, I had seen all the standard sci-fi and horror flicks. Jaws one through three, Alien, Texas Chainsaw, Black Christmas, Halloween, The Thing...The Blob, etc... Oddly, my father [only] cared if a film had nudity, sex, or taught something immoral."
"He thought Ferris Bueller promoted cutting school. He was pissed when he saw me watching Revenge of the Nerds, because of the nudity. Didn't let me watch any documentary on World War II. I guess he figured I knew what was and wasn't 'real' and could deal with what was fake for entertainment's sake. Freddy Krueger isn't real. Concentration camps were."
27."Dumbo."
For me, it's Bram Stoker's Dracula, which I wouldn't necessarily say traumatized me, but I saw it on TV as a kid without knowing what it was, and it stuck with me for so long. Same with Interview with the Vampire. If you guys have any movies you want to share, please let me know down below!
Note: Some submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.
