Snow White

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Not suitable under 6; parental guidance to 8 (violence, themes, scary scenes)

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This topic contains:

  • overall comments and recommendations
  • details of classification and consumer advice lines for Snow White
  • a review of Snow White completed by the Australian Council on Children and the Media (ACCM) on 25 March 2025.

Overall comments and recommendations

Children under 6 Not suitable due to violence, themes and scary scenes.
Children aged 6–8 Parental guidance recommended due to violence, themes and scary scenes.
Children aged 9 and over Ok for this age group.

About the movie

This section contains details about the movie, including its classification by the Australian Government Classification Board and the associated consumer advice lines. Other classification advice (OC) is provided where the Australian film classification is not available.

Name of movie: Snow White
Classification: PG
Consumer advice lines: Mild fantasy themes and violence
Length: 109 minutes

ACCM review

This review of the movie contains the following information:

A synopsis of the story

In a Kingdom ruled by kindness and compassion, a noble King and Queen longed for a child. When their prayers were answered and the Queen gave birth in the middle of a blizzard, they named their daughter Snow White (Rachel Zegler) to honour her resilience in surviving the storm. As she grew, they taught her powerful lessons about fearlessness, fairness, bravery and truth so that one day she too could rule the kingdom with integrity, courage and honour. But sadly, when Snow White was still a girl, her mother became ill and died, leaving Snow White and her father both heartbroken. That is, until a mysterious woman enters their lives, bewitching the castle and all of the Kingdom by her beauty – and soon she marries the King and becomes the new Queen (Gal Gadot). She then turns the farmers into soldiers, raising an army loyal only to her, and sends the King to his death. She imprisons Snow White in the castle and turns her into a servant, while she ravages the land extracting jewels and turns the people against one another. Years pass and the once bright and prosperous Kingdom is no more than a shadow of what it once was, its impoverished inhabitants forced to steal in order to survive and the kind-hearted Snow White still scrubbing floors.

When the Queen is informed by her magic mirror that Snow White has become more beautiful than she herself could ever hope to be, she flies into a terrible rage and orders a huntsman to take Snow White deep into the woods and kill her. Snow White flees the Queen’s fury and finds herself at a cottage belonging to seven dwarfs, including Dopey (voice of Andrew Barth Feldman), Sleepy (voice of Andy Grotelueschen) and Doc (voice of Jeremy Swift), whom she quickly befriends. With the help of a rebel named Jonathan (Andrew Burnap) and his band of thieves, Snow White finds the courage within herself to stand up to the Queen, to defend her people and to become the leader her parents always believed she could be.

Themesinfo

Children and adolescents may react adversely at different ages to themes of crime, suicide, drug and alcohol dependence, death, serious illness, family breakdown, death or separation from a parent, animal distress or cruelty to animals, children as victims, natural disasters and racism. Occasionally reviews may also signal themes that some parents may simply wish to know about.

Murder and attempted murder; Excessive vanity and greed; Selfishness; Death; Tyranny.

Use of violenceinfo

Research shows that children are at risk of learning that violence is an acceptable means of conflict resolution when violence is glamourised, performed by an attractive hero, successful, has few real life consequences, is set in a comic context and / or is mostly perpetrated by male characters with female victims, or by one race against another.

Repeated exposure to violent content can reinforce the message that violence is an acceptable means of conflict resolution. Repeated exposure also increases the risks that children will become desensitised to the use of violence in real life or develop an exaggerated view about the prevalence and likelihood of violence in their own world.

There is some violence in this movie, including:

  • The Queen ruthlessly cuts Snow White’s beautiful long hair and locks her away.
  • The Queen threatens Jonathan and tells her guards to burn his home. She takes his jacket and boots and ties him to a gate to freeze to death.
  • The Queen demands that her huntsman takes Snow White into the woods and kill her. She orders him to bring back the girl’s heart in a box.
  • In an apple orchard, the huntsman sneaks up behind Snow White with a dagger-like knife and is about to stab her. He holds the knife to her throat while Snow White asks him why he is doing it.
  • The Huntsman drops his arm and screams at Snow White to run, telling her he may change his mind about killing her.
  • Sleepy nearly falls off the edge of a cliff.
  • One dwarf is hit in the face with a shovel and another is hit with a bucket.
  • Dopey accidentally hits everyone with buckets and they all chase him onto a conveyer belt where they all fall into a big heap.
  • When the Queen realises that her huntsman has betrayed her, she tells her guards to “diminish him and finish him”. Her guards drag him away.
  • A dwarf hits his finger with a hammer, the hammer flies out of his hands, hits someone else and a huge fight ensues where they are all hitting each other and throwing food and household objects. The fight ends when a bowl of porridge lands on Dopey’s head and he runs off in embarrassment.
  • A soldier tries to kill Snow White with a crossbow. Jonathan throws himself in front of her and takes the arrow himself.
  • The Queen rips a necklace from Jonathan’s neck and imprisons him in her dungeon.
  • A vulture attacks a bluebird.
  • The Queen admits to having Snow White’s father killed, moments before Snow White collapses from the poisoned apple.
  • The Queen cuts Snow White’s cape with her dagger and orders the guards to let the people watch her die.

Material that may scare or disturb children

Under fiveinfo

Children under five are most likely to be frightened by scary visual images, such as monsters, physical transformations.

In addition to the above-mentioned violent scenes, there are some scenes in this movie that could scare or disturb children under the age of five, including the following:

  • The Queen’s magic mirror shows a gigantic face with gaping holes where the eyes should be. The voice that emanates from the mirror is deep and foreboding.
  • Snow White flees the huntsman in a panic and dashes deep into the woods. The trees quickly engulf and ensnare her, twisted branches reaching out to attack her and tear at her clothes. A large, tree-like monster with a gaping hole, as if a mouth, looms up before her as it seems to suck things into a vortex. Snow White falls down an embankment and into a pool of water. She drags herself onto the darkened bank where she sees a pair of red, glowing eyes peering at her from a cave. This entire time, Snow White is terrified, her dress is ripped and torn and the forest seems filled with monsters. The scene is filled with loud, suspenseful music and an imminent sense of peril, which many young children might find distressing.
  • The Queen smashes her magic mirror and, after doing so, a strange, tar-like substance begins to cover her face and body. She then crumbles apart and is sucked, screaming, into the mirror.

Aged five to eightinfo

Children aged five to eight will also be frightened by scary visual images and will also be disturbed by depictions of the death of a parent, a child abandoned or separated from parents, children or animals being hurt or threatened and / or natural disasters.

In addition to the above-mentioned violent scenes and scary visual images, there are some scenes in this movie that could scare or disturb children aged five to eight, including the following:

  • The Queen poisons an apple over a cauldron with bubbling smoke and all manner of evil ingredients. As the apple is dunked, a sinister skull face appears before it looks, once again, like a shiny, red apple.
  • The dwarfs are devastated when they find Snow White’s lifeless body in their garden. They lovingly place her on a rock in a beautiful part of the forest and keep watch over her as the forest animals gather around. There is sad music as everyone cries and, while the scene is not scary, it may be distressing to some children.

Aged eight to thirteeninfo

Children aged eight to thirteen are most likely to be frightened by realistic threats and dangers, violence or threat of violence and / or stories in which children are hurt or threatened.

  • Nothing further noted.

Product placement

  • None noted.

Sexual references

There are some sexual references in this movie, including:

  • One of the dwarfs refers to Jonathan as Snow White’s “special friend”.

Nudity and sexual activity

There is some nudity and sexual activity in this movie, including:

  • Snow White and Johnathon kiss on a couple of occasions.

Use of substances

There is some use of substances in this movie, including:

  • The Queen drinks a potion to transform herself into an unrecognisable old hag.
  • The Queen poisons an apple and tricks Snow White into eating it.

Coarse language

There is some coarse language in this movie, including:

  • Dope and Dopey.
  • Snow White is called an Ogre and a demon goat.

In a nutshell

Snow White is a live action remake of Walt Disney’s original classic. The film follows the general storyline of the 1937 film, with some modern adjustments to the original tale. The messages are certainly more empowering for females, as Snow White is not cleaning houses or waiting for a prince to fall in love with but rather she is finding herself and developing the courage to become the person she was always meant to be. The film is best suited to audiences over the age of seven.

The main messages from this movie are to believe in yourself and in your ability to make a difference; to always choose compassion over cruelty; and to realise that true beauty comes from within, that it cannot be captured by mirrors but rather that it is reflected in acts of kindness and in having empathy for others.

Values in this movie that parents may wish to reinforce with their children include:

  • Kindness
  • Loyalty
  • Bravery
  • Justice
  • Honesty
  • Hope.

This movie could also give parents the opportunity to discuss with their children attitudes and behaviours, and their real-life consequences, such as:

  • Excessive vanity and greed.
  • Ravaging the land and stripping it of minerals and resources without regard to the consequences.
  • Trusting those who would do you harm.
  • Looking out only for yourself and closing your eyes to the needs of others.
  • The impact of tyranny and injustice on those without power.