Suicide Squad and The Secret Life of Pets each attracted a couple of complaints.

An animated film about a spoilt terrier who enjoys a comfortable life in a New York building until his owner adopts a stray canine received the most complaints for 2016.

The Secret Life of Pets, directed by Chris Renaud and Yarrow Cheney, was classified with a G rating, meaning the film should have low levels of things like frightening scenes and any age was safe to view it.

All movies that arrive in New Zealand from Australia and the UK with a rating of M and below are not re-rated by the New Zealand Classifications Office.

Kiwis weren't too happy that "Suicide Squad" was rated M - the Classifications Office reviewed and re-rated to R16.

Senior Advisor Henry Talbot said the office received complaints from two members of the public about the film.

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"They thought it was too scary and violent and should have a higher rating," he said.

"Deadpool", rated R16, received one complaint, unlike the UK where it received 51 complaints.

As a result, the Office gave the film a new PG label for "low level violence".

Suicide Squad, which was initially rated M, also topped the list of the most complaints in NZ.

Directed by David Ayer, Suicide Squad is a US super hero action film that follows a group of super-villains selected by the secret government agency to form a defensive task force that eventually sees them tacking a world apocalypse.

But its violence did not sit right with a couple of New Zealanders, who considered it to be too horrific for children to freely watch as they please.

"The complainants both thought the film should be age restricted, mostly for violent content," Talbot said.

"We decided to classify the film following complaints and made it R13, 'violence, horror and cruelty'."

In the UK, Suicide Squad was the second-highest complained about film, receiving a total of 30 complaints.

It was Deadpool that topped it, however.

Based upon Marvel Comics' most unconventional anti-hero, Deadpool tells the origin story of former Special Forces operative turned mercenary Wade Wilson.

It received 51 complaints according to the 2016 annual report of the British Board of Film Classification.

Bloody violence, strong language and sex references generated the complaints, The Guardian reported.

Surprisingly, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children received 20 complaints.

In the report, obtained by The Guardian, the concerns about Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children were that it was too scary for a 12A rating.

It acknowledged that the film had monster characters which fed on eyeballs - but that they were infrequent - and the fantasy setting of the film as a whole reduces the intensity of these moments, The Guardian reported.

NZ Classifications received zero complaints for Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children, but did receive one for Deadpool.

The complaint for that film, rated R16 'Graphic violence, sex scenes & offensive language' in NZ as opposed to R15 in the UK, was from a 15-year-old who argued that parents should be able to choose whether underage people can go to restricted films.

"No one complained that the classification was too low," Talbot said.

Unlike the BBFC in the UK, the NZ Classifications Office can classify and receive complaints about, a whole range of things - not just films.

In 2016 the most complaints they received were about the unrestricted availability of Wicked campervans.

The vans, often seen with misogynist and sexual references, received seven complaints.

Talbot said public concern eventually led the Police to submit a number of campervans for classification, some of which were banned.