1922: parents' guide
Best for ages 16 and up. Rated TV-MA.
A slow, grim horror tale for mature older teens and adults about a 1920s Nebraska farmer who persuades his 14-year-old son to help murder the boy's mother over a land dispute. The killing is a drawn-out, bloody throat slashing, and her body is dumped in a well for rats to feed on. Guilt destroys father and son: the teenager runs off with his pregnant girlfriend, and both die, his death a suicide. Swearing is mild, sexual content is limited to crude talk and the teen pregnancy, and heavy drinking is frequent. The murder and gruesome decay imagery are why we suggest 16.
What's in it
Violence
StrongA woman's throat is slashed in a prolonged, bloody struggle while her son covers her face. Rats swarm her corpse, a cow is shot in the well, a pregnant teen is shot, a teen shoots himself, and an infected rat bite leads to amputation.
Language
MildCommon Sense rates the language as light: exclamations like goddammit and Christ, plus a drunken mother's coarse remarks to her son about sex.
Sex and nudity
ModerateNo nudity or sex scenes. A drunken mother tells her 14-year-old son, in crude detail, to explore his girlfriend's body but avoid getting her pregnant. The teens' sexual relationship is implied when she becomes pregnant, and the two fathers discuss it.
Drinking, drugs and smoking
ModerateThe farmer gets his wife drunk before the murder and then drinks heavily night after night as guilt sets in; there is vomiting, pills washed down with alcohol, and pipe smoking.
Scary or intense scenes
StrongDeliberately disturbing throughout: a mutilated corpse that returns as a rat-covered ghost, hordes of rats in walls and wells, decaying bodies, and a guilt-soaked atmosphere that builds to a nightmarish ending.
Sensitive topics
- Death of a parent
- Death of a child
- Suicide
- Animal death
- Domestic abuse
Worth talking about
The farmer concludes that everyone gets caught in the end. How does guilt work as a punishment in this story, and how does dragging his son into the crime change them both?
On our lists
Similar picks around 16+
Checked October 13th, 2026 against Common Sense Media, Wikipedia, netflix.com, ageratingjuju.com, springfieldspringfield.co.uk. The age is our judgment, not an official rating, and every family draws its lines differently: read the notes, not just the number. Spotted something we missed? Tell us. How we rate.