Common Sense Note

Parents need to know that this creepy horror film (which stars teen favorite Jessica Alba) features many suspenseful scenes full of ghosts, dead people, and shadows; these sequences are made scarier by the way the camera emulates Sydney's blurry vision. Violence includes explosions and fires in which people are burned. A brief scene shows Alba in the shower from the shoulders up, with her arm covering her breasts; another angle shows her crouched figure through a blurry door. Language is unusually mild for a PG-13 film.

Sexual Content

Sydney appears nude (from the shoulders up) in the shower through a blurry glass door, with an arm covering her breasts. She wears a cleavage-revealing gown at film's end.

Violence

Sydney is haunted by a number of distorted, scary, and injured-looking ghosts. Violence -- occurring in visions, memories, and real time -- includes an assault in a coffee shop, a car that hits a woman, a car that hits a gas truck (big explosion), a fire in a factory that leaves workers trapped and screaming, suicides (falling out a window, hanging), smashing windows with arms (one left bloody), and a creepy "Shadowman" who escorts souls to death (he looks mean and roars at Sydney). Montages are especially aggressive, with slamming images of harrowing situations (fires, agonies, bleeding eyes); tense scenes show Sydney walking through shadowy hallways, pursued by creatures/ghosts or unable to see clearly.

Language

One use each of "hell" and "ass."

Social Behavior

Sydney's fears inspire derision from her conductor/mentor and argument from her therapist. But she's a plucky girl and is determined to solve her own problem when the men refuse.

Consumerism

Starbucks coffee.

Drugs / Tobacco / Alcohol

Sydney drinks sherry the night before her surgery.