'Halloween' Gets Official Rating

The Halloween franchise regularly depicts a stalking killer brutally vanquishing his victims with a massive kitchen knife, which typically lends itself to violent death scenes. However, when a popular film gets a reboot or sequel, a studio might tone down more graphic elements in hopes of appealing to more viewers. The upcoming Halloween will stick with its horrifying roots, earning itself an R rating.

The MPAA has given the film its R rating due to "horror violence and bloody images, language, brief drug use and nudity."

All the films in the franchise have earned this rating, as the series never shies away from depicting gruesome deaths. Compared to other franchises, like A Nightmare on Elm Street or Friday the 13th, the Halloween films have been far more tame in their depictions of violent situations, as fans enjoy the scenes of Michael Myers stalking victims as opposed to the creative ways in which the killer dispatches teens.

In the new film, "A British documentary crew comes to the States to visit Michael in prison for a retrospective of the maniac's night of terror — but their project becomes way more interesting when Myers escapes custody, retrieves his signature mask and seeks revenge on Laurie, with others naturally being part of his impressive career body count along the way. In the decades following the fateful Halloween night that forever altered the former babysitter's life, Laurie has armed and prepped herself for Michael's inevitable return — to the detriment of her family, including daughter Karen and granddaughter Allyson."

Another way in which this new sequel will appeal to fans of the original film is that the movie's writers, Danny McBride and David Gordon Green, focused on recreating the overall ominous atmosphere of the 1978 film.

"The original is all about tension. Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) doesn't even know that Michael Myers exists until the last minutes of the movie," McBride told the Charleston City Paper. "So much of it you're in anticipation of what's going to happen and the dread that [director John] Carpenter spins so effortlessly in that film, I think we were really trying to get it back to that. We're trying to mine that dread. Mine that tension and not just go for gore and ultra-violence that you see some horror movies lean on."

Fans will see the horrors the filmmakers have in store when Halloween hits theaters on October 19th.

Do you think the new film might focus too heavily on violence? Let us know in the comments below or hit up @TheWolfman on Twitter to talk all things horror and Star Wars!

[H/T Bloody Disgusting]