DS2 (aged 10) wants to watch horror and won't be fobbed off by anything age appropriate. Help!

[IScreamAtMichaelangelos]

Pretty much as the title... he wants zombies, monsters, etc. Stuff that we watched as kids in the 80s doesn't seem to cut it, as it's old 🙄

Please hit me with your best recommendations for a boy who is currently lamenting loudly at the cruelty of me not letting him watch Squid Game the problem is, he'd LOVE it

Apparently The Ring is a 12...

Oddly enough the Others absolutely scared the shite out of me aged 20 😳😆😆 I was literally traumatised for days. Despite generally loving and being okay with stuff like that. It’s curious isn’t it what scares people and what doesn’t!

Arachnophobia is only a PG but my grown up nieces and nephews like to reminisce about when I traumatised them by letting them watch it when they were that age.

'Lamenting loudly'

Give him a scary book - nothing more terrifying than his own imagination...

Plenty of early teenage books that will scare the shit out of him

John Carpenter’s The Thing. Bit of swearing, lots of tension and gore.

"Apparently The Ring is a 12..."

That'll maybe be because there's no sexual element. I watched the Grudge which is terrifying and a 15 here I believe, in Asia and a group of children on what appeared to be a school trip for 8 year olds were there watching it! I asked a local about that and they said anything goes except sex!

Age inappropriate

The only thing we let ours watch at that she was the watcher in the woods. Old Disney movie but very spooky.

Shark films? Croc films? Things with an element of danger like Touching the Void?

Dante's Peak
Alien
Open Water

I'll second creeped out - it is scarier than it looks and although variable most are really good.

Supernatural scared the pants off me in my 40s!

What about Shaun of the Dead or Zombieland? I'd let my 4 year old watch them so I'm sure they'd be fine for a 10 year old

Signs, the Goonies, ET, Edward Scissorhands

I know they aren't 'horror' but they do give a bit of a fright.

The Lost Boys
The Ring
Salem’s Lot

-all brilliant nothing too horrible.

A primary had Hunger Games books in their library???

Thank you for these recommendations!

The reason I'm allowing this? Honestly, I feel a bit bad for him that he has to spend years watching what is (in his opinion) uninteresting shit. The boy loves scares, always has. He even loved Batman, the really darkly drawn version in the Justice League cartoons, when he was 3 :/ so I think this is just his nature and that we as his parents can (cautiously) accommodate it. He certainly can't watch any of these things without us present.

Regarding programmes: he wasn't impressed by Creeped Out and has watched Wednesday (loved it). He also loved Jaws. He has watched a Korean movie called #alive with us, which was all about zombies (whoo!) but also was quite an interesting psychological study of isolation, and he seemed to enjoy it.

He has agreed to Shaun of the Dead - fingers crossed!

Just be careful. If school gets wind of him watching 'horror' ,questions may well be asked!

Oh yes, he liked Edward Scissorhands too!

I guess they could report OP to children's services who will do pretty much bugger all about a young horror fan watching some vert carefully considered films.

Stranger things
woman in black
the ring
Fall
47 metres down
the Meg
open water 2:adrift (the latter three should appeal if he liked jaws)

Also Insidious

Salams Lot is bloody terrifying. The window scene 😮

Thriller?

Sixth sense
The village

World war Z is fantastic!

A site called commonsense media reviews films’ age ratings and gives you a good idea of the content. Eg for me I won’t let them watch anything sexual or with adults being violent to children or men violent to women but I don’t mind blood/gore/monsters.