You Were Never Really Here | 2018 | R | – 5.8.7

Why is “You Were Never Really Here” rated R? The MPAA rating has been assigned for “strong violence, disturbing and grisly images, language, and brief nudity.” The Kids-In-Mind.com evaluation includes nudity and references to girls being groomed for sex, several scenes of violent events in flashback and many brutal attacks, beatings and shootings resulting in death and blood, and almost 30 F-words. Read our parents’ guide below for details on sexual content, violence & strong language.”

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A traumatized, suicidal veteran (Joaquin Phoenix) tracks down missing girls for a living while dealing brutal justice to kidnappers. When a politician hires him to find his teen daughter (Ekaterina Samsonov) and he uncovers a conspiracy of pedophiles, he takes his mission personally. Also with Judith Roberts, Dante Pereira-Olson, Frank Pando and John Doman. Directed by Lynne Ramsay. [Running Time: 1:29]

You Were Never Really Here SEX/NUDITY 5

 – A nude man (we see his bare chest, abdomen, buttocks and unclear genital area) is pulled out of a room and beaten to death (please see the Violence/Gore category for more details); we see the nude body a few more times and a young girl walks slowly out of the room (sex is implied to have taken place). A portrait of a woman is shown with her open robe open exposing one bare breast and upper abdomen. A man pulls off his shirt and we see his bare chest and abdomen. A shirtless man is shown from behind and we see his bare back, with scars and a bruise on his shoulder. A woman wears a full slip that reveals cleavage. Several men are shown in a sauna with towels over their heads and towels wrapped around their waists (bare chests and abdomens are seen). Women are shown wearing short skirts in a few scenes.
► A teen girl is shown wearing a short nightgown and lying in a bed (presumably waiting for a man to come in for sex) until a man enters the room and kills another man (please see the Violence/Gore category for more details) and then carries the girl out of the building.
► A teen girl hugs a man and kisses him on the cheek; he pushes her away and tells her “No.”

You Were Never Really Here VIOLENCE/GORE 8

 - A man with a hammer beats another man (off-screen), he attacks another man and we see him from behind as he pounds on the man until he is dead, and then pulls a nude man (please see the Sex/Nudity category for more details) out of a room and beats him with the hammer (we see the man lying dead in the hallway a few times and what appears to be a puddle of urine is seen near the body at one point); a young girl walks slowly out of the room and through the hallway (this sequence is seen through security camera footage and we do not hear any sound). A man hits another man with a hammer (we do not see the result).
► A man opens a door and another man is shot in the head outside the door spraying blood on the first man's face; the two men fight and we hear more gunfire (one man is shot in the face) and one man breaks the neck of the other man with a quick twist (we see blood on the floor). A man shoots two men in his house, one man is shown dead with blood on the wound and the other crawls away until the gunman turns him over and we see a bloody wound on his abdomen. A man imagines shooting himself in the head in a diner (blood sprays on other people in the diner, and pools on the table where his head lays as a server places his check on the table). A man has a flashback to a desert setting where we see armed soldiers as a teen boy shoots another teen boy and steals a candy bar one soldier had just given him (we see the body fall and no blood is evident). A teen boy and a man are held at gunpoint and we hear a gunshot off-screen.
► A man has a flashback to a scene that appears to be many dead young women/teen girls trapped in a locker of some sort (truck or freezer). A man attacks another man in an alley and hits him with something; the attacked man head-butts him and he crumples to the ground and he vomits (we see a splatter of liquid). A man buys what we think are drugs from another man and punches him hard in the stomach, out of the frame (we hear a grunt). A man grabs a man and shoves him into the back seat of a car where he questions him, tapes his hands behind his back and knocks him out.
► A dead man is shown with his throat slit and a lot of blood on the wound and the floor around him. A dead man is shown with very bloody hands, with holes gouged in them, and a pool of blood covering a desktop (torture is implied). A woman lies dead in a bed with a pillow over her face; we see that she has been shot through the pillow in the eye (we see blood on the bed and blood is shown on her broken glasses). A dead man is shown with a bloody bullet wound in his head and another man lies dead (no wound is seen). A man with a bloody face and mouth wound from a gunshot slowly pulls a tooth using a pair of pliers (we hear a crunch and see the bloody tooth), and then pours rubbing alcohol on a wound on his face. A man is shown with a plastic bag on his head breathing heavily in a few scenes, in possible suicide attempts. A man has frequent flashbacks to violent experiences from his childhood: we see a child in a closet with a plastic bag over his head and hear a woman scream and a man yell off-screen (implying spousal abuse), we hear a child's voice repeating that he must do better, and we hear a man berating a child for not standing up straight.
► A man lying on a bed holds a knife over his open mouth (he does not drop it). A man drops a knife over his foot several times stabbing the floor and moving his foot out of the way. A man's arm is shown with a bloody wound. A teen girl touches a man's arm and we see blood on her fingers. A man hits himself in the forehead with his hand.
► A man wraps plastic around a dead body, takes it to a lake, fills his jacket pockets with rocks and walks into the water with the body; he lets the body sink and we see him under water for a period of time before he unloads his pockets and surfaces. A man burns a photograph of a young girl in a garbage can, wipes blood from a hammer and gathers items into a bag that he throws away. A man imagines seeing a teen girl under water.
► A woman is shown lying on a floor and we see blood on her head and the floor as she gestures to someone off-screen (she was apparently beaten by her husband). A man is seen with a very bloody nose and several bloody tissues on his desk (we don't know what happened). A teen girl is shown with bloody hands and a bloody straight razor is seen on the table next to her. A man's face is shown swollen and discolored from a gunshot wound. A man's back is shown with scars and a bruise on his shoulder. A woman's hand is shown wrapped in a bandage and cast and her hand appears swollen and bruised. We see a person in the background lying on a sidewalk. A man vomits outside an apartment door (we see a puddle on the ground).
► We hear the trickling of urination off-screen after a teen girl tells a man, "I have to go." We hear a news report of a man falling to his death from a high-rise building. We hear a news report about a tomato crisis. A man talks about a woman having committed suicide and her teen daughter running away from home repeatedly. A man talks about his teen daughter having been taken to a place where underage girls are put into the sex trade. A man tells another man, "I want you to hurt them."
► A man makes a stabbing gesture while talking about the movie "Psycho." A man has a panic attack and he cries, shakes and pulls his shirt off. A man leans over a subway platform and moves back as the train speeds by.

You Were Never Really Here LANGUAGE 7

 - About 28 F-words, 2 scatological terms, 3 anatomical terms, 2 mild obscenities, name-calling (stupid, brutal, freaks, dumb), exclamations (goodness sake), 3 religious profanities (GD), 2 religious exclamations (God Bless Her, God). | profanity glossary |

You Were Never Really Here SUBSTANCE USE

 - A man gives a wounded man a pill (presumably for pain), and a man buys what seems to be drugs (please see the Violence/Gore category for more details). A teen girl drinks something from a bottle (it's not clear what it is). A man smokes a cigarette on a sidewalk, and a teen boy is seen from a distance smoking on a fire escape.

You Were Never Really Here DISCUSSION TOPICS

 - Spousal abuse, grooming, sex trade, murder for hire, PTSD, suicide, pedophilia, conspiracies.

You Were Never Really Here MESSAGE

 - Sometimes it takes a mentally disturbed individual to deal out proper justice.