Vox Lux | 2018 | R | – 4.6.6

Why is “Vox Lux” rated R? The MPAA rating has been assigned for “language, some strong violence, and drug content.” The Kids-In-Mind.com evaluation includes implied sex, sexual references and form-fitting stage costumes, violent acts that include a mass shooting ending in the death of many people, drug use, and a couple of verbal altercations, and about 15 F-words. Read our parents’ guide below for details on sexual content, violence & strong language.”

---

The story of a singer’s (Natalie Portman) rise to pop star status starts with a high school mass shooting that leaves her with PTSD. Also with Jude Law, Christopher Abbott, Raffey Cassidy, Jennifer Ehle, Stacy Martin and the voice of Willem Dafoe. Directed by Brady Corbet. A few lines of dialogue are spoken in an unidentified language accompanied by English subtitles. [Running Time: 1:50]

Vox Lux SEX/NUDITY 4

 – A man and a young woman lie in bed together (we see the young woman wearing a camisole and underwear that reveal cleavage and a part of her abdomen and buttocks) and it is implied that they had sex. A young man and a teen girl lie in bed (she is clothed and he is wearing underwear and we see his bare back) and he lays with his arm across her chest (it is not clear if anything sexual occurs). Men and women are shown drinking and dancing in a dance club.
► A young man is shown wearing underwear and his bare chest, abdomen and legs are shown. A teen girl and a woman wear body suits while practicing dance moves and the teen girl’s outfit reveals her legs to the hips and partial lower buttocks. A teen girl wears a low-cut camisole that reveals cleavage. A woman wears a bra that reveals cleavage and bare abdomen. A woman wears a low cut dress that reveals cleavage. A woman wears a cropped top that reveals part of her bare abdomen. Many dancers wear skin-tight costumes (we see the outlines of breasts and buttocks) for a performance and they dance with hip thrusting and gyrations.
► Two teen girls put on makeup and talk about going out; one says the other is “so sexy.” We hear that a teen girl lost her virginity and her mother makes her take a pregnancy test (she is not pregnant). A man hugs a teen girl close and a woman tells him to get his hands off her. A woman tells a man that he can have sex with her when they get high (please see the Sex/Nudity category for more details). A woman talks about seeing other women in dressing rooms and makes reference to someone having her “tail cut off.” The word “SEX” appears on a screen above a stage during a performance. A reference is made to a young woman enjoying the “pleasurable parts of adulthood.”

Vox Lux VIOLENCE/GORE 6

 - A teen boy enters a classroom and shoots a woman (blood spurts and we see her dead body with blood pooled on the floor), he shoots into the ceiling and many students scream and run against a wall where they are shot (blood spurts from a teen girl's neck when she is struck by a bullet and we later see many bloody bodies piled against the wall) and the shooter is shown dead on the floor (it's self-inflicted wound and blood pools under his head and body). Several armed and masked men walk onto a beach and shoot many sunbathers (we see bodies fall with no blood evident and hear screaming) and we see this scene repeated again a couple of times. A car outside a school building blows up (we see flames).
► A teen girl is shown with an oxygen mask on her face and blood on her face as she is being treated on an ambulance. A teen boy takes a contact lens out of his eye with his finger. A teen girl is shown on an exam table and going into an MRI machine, and she is seen doing therapy in a pool (we see a bandage on her neck) and convalescing in a hospital bed. A woman is helped to walk when she has taken a lot of drugs and alcohol before a performance.
► A teen girl practices dance moves and she seems to be in pain from the activity and a healing gunshot wound. A teen girl tickles another teen girl and the second girl yells and tells her to stop, saying that it hurts her neck (due to a previous gunshot wound).
► A woman has several emotional outbursts and becomes physically threatening during in a few; when a man in a diner asks for a picture with her she yells at him, curses and pounds on the table before storming out. A man reprimands two teen girls after they went to a dance club and drank too much one night. Two women yell at a man for the kinds of questions he was asking in an interview. A teen girl walks into a hotel room and tells a man and a young woman about the 9/11 attacks. We hear that a woman (she's blind in one eye) drove and struck a pedestrian damaging his pelvis and crushing his leg, and then accosted him with racial epithets. We hear that a woman has a bullet lodged in her vertebrae. A teen girl cries and says that she would have died if another girl had died in a school shooting, or that she would have killed herself. We hear that a teen boy that shot many classmates had shot and killed his grandparents also. People gather at a vigil after a school shooting and an injured teen girl uses a wheelchair and then a walker to stand at a podium. A man talks about an arson attack on a building and asks for violent acts to cease. A teen girl asks a man not to curse in front of her sister. We hear that Sweden banned music from the U.S. and called it degenerate. A teen girl talks about a nightmare where she drives past a lifeless but not dead body and does not stop for it. People talk about a mass shooting on a beach in Croatia and that 14 people died. We hear that a woman drunk herself blind in one eye after ingesting methanol from household cleaners. A voiceover tells us that a teen girl met the devil after a shooting and made a deal for her life.
► A teen girl vomits in a toilet (we hear gagging and see chunks of goo on the seat) after she drinks too much. We see scarring on a woman's abdomen and neck.
► Strobe lights flash during a concert scene (such sequences may affect viewers that are susceptible to photosensitive epilepsy or other photo sensitivities).

Vox Lux LANGUAGE 6

 - About 15 F-words and its derivatives, 13 scatological terms, 2 anatomical terms, 3 mild obscenities, name-calling (degenerate, pterodactyl, spoiled brat, retard, retarded, crazy, slut, mean, fat, hideous, garbage, floosy, cowards, cross-eyed Guido, ultra-violent thugs, ugly, mean, trailer trash, ungrateful sow), exclamations (shut-up, jeez), 9 religious exclamations (e.g. I Swear To God, Oh God, Thank Christ, For Christ's Sake, I Used To Believe In God, Jesus). | profanity glossary |

Vox Lux SUBSTANCE USE

 - A man and woman snort cocaine and drink liquor (they both are extremely inebriated and the woman falls flat on her face on the floor), a teenage girl takes an unidentified prescription pill (presumably a pain killer), a young man talks about having taken something before a performance and asks a teen girl if she has anything (she says only painkillers), a woman asks if a man has "any more of that stuff from last night," we hear that a woman drunk herself blind in one eye after ingesting methanol from household cleaners, and we hear that a woman has been mixing uppers with downers. A woman orders wine in a diner and drinks it in a plastic cup through a straw to hide it from her teen daughter, many people drink heavily at a dance club (including a teen girl that gets sick later), and a man and a woman drink liquor in a hotel room. A man smokes cigarettes in a control room during recording sessions in several scenes, a man smokes in many other scenes in hotel rooms and limousines, and we see cartons of cigarettes in a duty free shop.

Vox Lux DISCUSSION TOPICS

 - School shootings, principles, PTSD, fame, guilt, anger, forgiveness, trust, estranged families, music industry, notoriety, responsibility, pop music, cultural shift, fear, hate, betrayal.

Vox Lux MESSAGE

 - Life's challenges can be difficult to deal with and life isn't that fair.