In person? Yeah, that'd probably be more upsetting. On a video? Probably not. Disembowelings don't actually look nearly as disgusting as they sound.

Brutal throat rape then. Whatever.

I think the context point is relevant here. If the child can see (and hear, and 'feel') that the pain and trauma and violence is real, then I agree that the actual watching would be a far more powerful experience.

If, like most film depictions, all that violence is dramatised as part of an action montage, then I think it 'feels' more like watching a Tom & Jerry cartoon. There is a distancing from the reality of it, caught up in the overall scene of an action movie.

I can see that, definitely. I guess I'm looking at a more 1-to-1 sort of thing. I found the rape scene in A Clockwork Orange much more viscerally upsetting than in the book, for example. But, of course, that's not to say that it wasn't upsetting in the book as well.

I agree with Ducky, when you are seeing/hearing it, the experience has a much greater impact on your brain than the more abstract interaction one has with text. Comparing TV and movies to themselves however, artful camera angles and edits may show less but have a greater impact still as its told your brain just enough for it to fill in the remaining details, its the difference between gory and utterly chilling; again tho, sound and visuals are still critical.

You guys are ignoring that some people have vivid imaginations, and some people are very visual. Movies and books are going to affect those people differently. Despite my own imagination, I am a detached reader, but visual mediums really hit me in a visceral part of the brain. The opening sequence of Game of Thrones was much freakier for me in video than it was in text. Silence of the Lambs was much scarier on screen (at a young age) than many far more gruesome books, for me personally.

Once a parent gets past whether the content is acceptable at all, the decision should still be made on a kid by kid basis, knowing how they react to page vs. screen.

I still find it morbid that our society frowns upon showing hanky panky to tweens, but brutal killing is okay. Perhaps it's because the likelihood of one is far more probable, but still. Make love, not war.

All I'm saying is that I'd rather an 11 year old read the Saw IV novelization than watch the film. Not that a novelization exists, one must hope.

Yeah, I'm not sure I'd be happy with my 11 year old reading or watching any of the Saw stories.

To answer the OP, I say it depends on your girl: if she is ok to watch a level of violence on par with a Rambo movie or less gruesome than the first Predator film, then she should be alright. Put another way, the movie doesn't rise to the level of visceral impact that the book has.

This is what I mean by shots/editing; there is more information there for your brain to fill in the gaps with then a text is capable of providing.Yes, I wince reflexively when someone mentions the chicken scissors, but Silence of the Lambs was disquieting.