Is “A Quiet Place: Day One” OK for Tweens? What to Know Before Bringing the Family to the PG-13 Thriller

The new film is rated PG-13 for "terror and violent content/bloody images"

Is the latest A Quiet Place film suitable for tweens brave enough to see the horror-thriller?

Lupita Nyong'o stars in the new spinoff A Quiet Place: Day One, which tracks the first day of an alien invasion. Creatures that hunt by sound take over New York City in the film, which is full of jump scares and looming death.

The film is rated PG-13 for "terror and violent content/bloody images."

For comparison, the 2018 original, which starred Emily Blunt and John Krasinski, was PG-13 for "terror and some bloody images," and its 2020 sequel was the same rating, but for "terror, violence and bloody/disturbing images."

A Quiet Place: Day One writer-director Michael Sarnoski told PEOPLE at the New York City premiere that whether children can see the film "depends" on the person. "As a kid, I would've watched a movie like this, but it's pretty scary in some spots."

"If your kid is good with scares, go for it," he added. "There's a lot of heart. There's an adorable cat, but there's some freaky monsters in it and some pretty scary stuff. I would say 10 and older? I don't know."

Read on for what to know before bringing children to A Quiet Place: Day One, in theaters now. (Warning: The following contains spoilers for the film.)

There are lots of violent monsters on the loose

While the previous two films may have left more to the imagination, the creatures are shown onscreen much more frequently and up close in Day One (partially thanks to a bigger budget). Some scenes show swarms of the aliens running along the New York City setting and attacking civilians trying to hide or get away.

Director Sarnoski told IndieWire, “I liked in the early movies that they didn’t overshow them. One of the scariest things about these creatures is this whole ‘you make a sound, you die.’ There is something simple and fundamental about that that everyone can relate to."

"I didn’t want to overshare to the point where they just became these scary, clawy creatures," he continued, "but at the same time we wanted to hit that scope and scale of this is a large invasion, and there are herds of these things in this very loud city. ... [We] started by not showing too much and by the end, you build up to it being a little more in your face."

A cat is shown in peril

While children were often in danger (or killed) by the creatures in the previous Quiet Place films, this spinoff focuses mostly on adults. However, the cat owned by main character Sam (Nyong'o), named Frodo and played by two cats called Schnitzel and Nico, is occasionally in danger.

The cat does miraculously survive the film unscathed, though.

There are plenty of noisy jump scares

Many of the frights play with the idea of sound and silence, since the aliens hunt based on noise. This adds to the suspense and leads to very loud, startling jump scares that could be too much for some young children to handle.

There are themes of death and cancer

Not only is the lead character, a poet named Sam (Nyong'o), fighting to stay alive during the apocalyptic alien-invasion scenario, but she is also battling terminal cancer.

At the start of the film, she is shown in hospice care, and once she becomes stranded in Manhattan during the invasion, she is desperate to find medication and knows she's running out of time.

Spoilers: In the film's climax, Sam plans to sacrifice herself so her friend Eric (Joseph Quinn) can make it to a getaway boat with her cat Frodo and survive. He is able to make it to safety, and Sam too manages to live. Then, she enjoys some music before attracting the monsters with noise to find her.

Nyong'o told PEOPLE about the ending, "I loved that she was given agency up until the end, and that she went out on her own terms. I think that it was a very risky story that Michael Sarnoski chose to tell. It just shows that even when life is slipping, there is still more life to live, until there's not."

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Read the original article on People.