Update: Age rating of our film

Our product was intended to be aimed at the age group of 15+ because our narrative was aimed at the age group who could understand and handle how bullying can lead to serious damage in a person. We also did not want to encourage any of the dangerous actions in our film, therefore our film idea was initially suitable as a 15 rated film. However, with some research on the BBFC website to clarify our thoughts on which age rating it should be, we found that because we have a small scene of the knife inserting the bully, it should be changed to an 18 rated film as people under this age would not be able to tolerate the violence of this scene. If it was to be released to a younger audience, they would potentially be hypodermically injected with thoughts of violence and may carry out the same procedure. This is shown in a real life example of the case of the two boys who killed the 2 year old Jamie Bulger after watching the horror movie 'Child's play 3'. They committed a copycat crime of copying the exact actions that took place in the movie, such as throwing the brick and taking the toddler to a train track. Whilst watching this movie, it lead to the feeling of desensitisation in the boys as they were desensitised to violence and so did not feel any remorse whilst killing the toddler.
We feel that our film is rated 18 instead of 15 because younger audiences may not understand the meaning behind Mila's revenge.

After an email sent to the BBFC by myself, they had confirmed that if our film was to be published then it would be an 18 rated film because of the stabbing scene.
 (click on the image for a larger view)

After Jacob's email, I decided to check the links he had provided me and found this (the following image) in relation to our product:

This made me have a better feeling about our product being an 18 rated film rather than a 15 rated film as our film have scenes of violence in it. Although I was slightly in a confused state and waited for the education team from the BBFC to respond to me.





As I waited, I researched other 15 rates horror films and shows and found that the show 'Black Mirror' Season 3, episode 5 had a similar scene to ours; there as a short clip of the soldier stabbing a person and it showed the process of the knife going in and out of the body like in our horror film.

Therefore we decided to keep the age rating as '15' as we believe that our content is not as violent as for example the content in the horror film 'SAW'. Furthermore, in our narrative, Mila continuously takes anti-depressant pills . If we showed her to be obsessed with these and continuously take them then it may have been an 18 rated film.