What You Need to Know Before Letting Kids Watch Decision to Leave
I've spent years helping parents figure out whether a movie is actually appropriate for their kids, and Decision to Leave is one of those films that looks safe from the poster but isn't. It's a 2022 South Korean film directed by Park Chan-wook, and while it plays like a standard detective romance on paper, it has content that makes a PG or even PG-13 rating feel way too generous. Most streaming platforms and rating boards don't give this the same warning level it probably deserves, which is why a proper parents guide matters. The film runs about two hours and eighteen minutes. It follows a detective investigating a woman's husband who fell off a mountain, and things get complicated from there. The main content concerns are sexual material, some violence, and language that piles up over the runtime. Sex scenes appear throughout, though they're not excessively graphic by most standards. There are partial nudity moments and implied sexual activity, plus some dialogue that's pretty direct about the physical relationship between the leads. For younger teens, that's going to be the biggest issue. If your kid is fifteen or sixteen and you've already had the sex talk, this might pass. Under fourteen, I'd be wary. Violence is present but not extreme in a gory sense. There's a death early on — a man falls from a mountain during what appears to be a suicide. Later sequences involve a struggle and some bloody aftermath, though nothing lingers on it. The tone is more melancholic than brutal. Still, the premise involves a murder investigation, and there are scenes where characters are threatened and a gun gets used. Kids who are sensitive to crime-related content will pick up on that atmosphere quickly.
Language includes some profanity, mostly mild to moderate by English dub standards. In the original Korean with subtitles, the intensity shifts a bit depending on how you interpret the Korean expletives, but the English tracks I've seen land around a handful of strong words and a lot of moderate ones. Not the worst offender for language, but enough that parents who filter that stuff out will notice it.
How This Compares to What You'll See on Rating Sites
Here's the thing most parents miss when they're reading a generic rating description. Decision to Leave is rated R in the United States, mostly for sexual content and some language. But that R rating doesn't tell you much about what's actually in there or how it's presented. The sexual content is ongoing and woven into the romance, not isolated to one or two scenes. A kid could sit through the first hour thinking it's just a tense thriller and then realize halfway through that this isn't what they signed up for. I learned this the hard way once with a different Park Chan-wook film — my teenager and I were both caught off guard by how sexual the material got, and it changed the whole dynamic of us watching together. You can plan around it by previewing first or skipping to the sections you're comfortable with, but the content isn't evenly distributed, which makes that harder here than with most films. Another nuance people overlook is the emotional intensity. This isn't just a content checklist situation. The film deals with obsession, grief, and a detective blurring professional lines with a suspect's widow. Some younger viewers will find that emotional tension more disturbing than any explicit scene. The pacing is also deliberately slow. If your kid is used to faster-paced thrillers, they might tune out long stretches before hitting the more mature material. That mismatch between appearance and reality is what makes this film tricky to assess at a glance.
Get the Full Details
Where to Find It and What to Watch For
The film is available through major streaming platforms and rental services. Look for the theatrical version, not any cut-down edits, since the R-rated content is in the original release. Some platforms might list it with a softer rating depending on the region, so always double-check the MPAA or local board rating before starting it. If you're the type to fast-forward through flagged content, know that the sexual material is spread across roughly forty minutes of screen time in total. The violence appears in concentrated bursts in the second act. My workaround when I'm unsure about a film's content is to pull up the detailed scene-by-scene breakdowns on parenting sites rather than relying on the overall rating alone. That approach usually saves about twenty minutes of guesswork compared to just pressing play and reacting in real time. For kids under fourteen, I'd recommend holding off unless they've had solid conversations about romance and sexuality. Teenagers between fourteen and seventeen should be fine if their parents are comfortable with the content profile. The film is genuinely well-made, and the acting is strong, but it's not a family movie night pick in the traditional sense. It's a grown-up drama with thriller elements wrapped around a romance that goes into mature territory. That's the straightforward version of it. One more thing worth noting: if you're using parental controls on your streaming service, this film may or may not be blocked depending on the threshold you've set. Some services flag it as R, others as TV-MA. Check your specific platform's rating for this title. The inconsistency across services is a genuine problem and it means the rating alone shouldn't be your only guide. Read the content details, make your own call, and don't assume the platform did the hard work for you.
