Pixar’s Elio pushes ratings boundaries with sci-fi horror references

Pixar films have its fair share of dark and intense moments. The studio’s upcoming film could spice things up with the addition of horror elements.

Screen Rant revealed that the director of Pixar’s Elio, Madeline Sharafian, stated how the upcoming 2025 animated film will push the studio’s ratings boundaries with the inclusion of horror genres references.

Based on an interview with Empire, the director made some interesting promises regarding Elio’s genre and intensity. As mentioned earlier, the 2025 Pixar film will consist of certain horror references that are sci-fi related with homage paid to films such as Alien, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and The Thing. Considering Elio is a sci-fi film, this could actually work.

Moreover, the Turning Red storyboard artist also stated that Elio will “ride that line of the PG movie” by having it be “weirder and a little creepier” than other PG films normally would be. Here’s the full quote from Sharafian:

“[Elio has] some sci-fi horror references. It’s one of our best surprises, so I don’t want to give away too much. I’m always trying to push it to be weirder and a little creepier, to ride that line of the PG movie.”

Hopefully, the horror elements won’t be too traumatic for children but enough to at least send some chills to everyone across all ages.

Elio is set to release in theaters on June 13, 2025.

Vernon Maung
Contributor

Vernon is a huge fan of movies, anime, Star Wars, K-Pop and is willing to branch out to different mediums such as video games. As someone who loves to share his opinions or read news related to entertainment industries, whether it's anime or movie related, he wants to give his all in expressing his thoughts and informing people about the latest topics in his areas of interest.