There’s a lot of excitement surrounding the upcoming Halloween movie, so any piece of news or info that arises is at the very least worthy of interest. Such is the case with today’s news that not only is Halloween rated R, but the MPAA has designated it as such due to ”horror violence and bloody images, language, brief drug use and nudity.”
The R-rating is not a surprise—Blumhouse knows they would have been burned at the stake had they tried to release a PG-13 Halloween movie. But the scare factor is certainly teased by the fact that the first line of the rating description is “horror violence and bloody images.”
This film was crafted by David Gordon Green and Danny McBride, who pitched a take on a new Halloween movie to Blumhouse that quickly received a greenlight: What if you discarded every Halloween sequel and picked up with Laurie Strode 40 years after the most traumatic night of her life? What would the experience of the first Halloween have done to her over the decades, and how would she react if Michael Myers came back all these years later?
That’s a really fascinating take on the Halloween franchise, and even as a fan of plenty of the Halloween sequels, I’m totally fine with Green and McBride taking an “alternative history” route with this new film—to the extent that Michael Myers is no longer Laurie's brother, but still a masked stranger. Jamie Lee Curtis returns once again in the lead role, but this time she has a daughter (Judy Greer) and granddaughter (Allyson Strode) to complicate matters.
We don’t know much else about how the story unfolds, but the first trailer was mighty effective and Green has proven himself to be a wonderfully adept filmmaker at bringing an intimate quality to a variety of genres (Pineapple Express, Prince Avalanche, Stronger), so there’s every reason to be optimistic about this one.
The film hits theaters on October 19th. For even more on Halloween, peruse links to our recent coverage below:
- 'Halloween' Slashes Through Comic-Con with a Stunning Footage Debut
- Danny McBride Says They Considered Shooting Two ‘Halloween’ Movies Back-to-Back
- A Deep-Dive with Jamie Lee Curtis on ‘Halloween’ & Her Legacy as a Horror Icon
- ‘Halloween': David Gordon Green & Danny McBride on Bringing the Horror Franchise Back to Basics
