New Scream Earns Official Rating

While it likely won't come as much of a surprise, the upcoming Scream has officially earned an R rating from the MPA. With the inherent nature of the film, as well as its predecessors, and how they never shy away from delivering audiences disturbing horror stories, this rating serves more as confirmation that the film is locked and ready to be released, which should surely excite Ghostface fans. The reason for the rating is due to "strong bloody violence, language throughout, and some sexual references." After initially being delayed due to the coronavirus pandemic, the new Scream is slated to hit theaters on January 14, 2022.

Twenty-five years after a streak of brutal murders shocked the quiet town of Woodsboro, a new killer has donned the Ghostface mask and begins targeting a group of teenagers to resurrect secrets from the town's deadly past. Neve Campbell ("Sidney Prescott"), Courteney Cox ("Gale Weathers"), and David Arquette ("Dewey Riley") return to their iconic roles in Scream alongside Melissa Barrera, Kyle Gallner, Mason Gooding, Mikey Madison, Dylan Minnette, Jenna Ortega, Jack Quaid, Marley Shelton, Jasmin Savoy Brown, and Sonia Ammar.  

From director Wes Craven and writer Kevin Williamson, the original Scream was a landmark experience for a number of reasons. Throughout the '80s, slashers dominated the world of horror, though most of these experiences were slapped-together plots featuring a masked killer violently murdering scantily clad coeds. As this formula grew tiresome in the late '80s and early '90s, the genre pivoted more towards psychological thrillers, as figures like Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees morphed into cartoon characters as opposed to intimidating maniacs.

With Scream, Craven and Williamson found a way to entirely revive the slasher subgenre, not only by delivering a mysterious and unexpected narrative, but also by turning slasher tropes on their head, thanks to the film's characters using the "rules" they learned from horror in hopes of avoiding the killer. 

Part of turning tropes on their head was introducing an all-new icon in the shape of the masked "Ghostface" disguise, which was merely a store-bought Halloween costume.

"No one could agree on a mask and I remember we were in a location scout, and we found Ghostface ... in a box of stuff in a garage," Williamson previously recalled of Ghostface's origins. "Wes immediately looked at it and said, 'This is like the famous Scream painting.' And so we took that to our production and we said, 'Riff on this... make something like this.' They must've done 20 different designs."

He added, "Every one of them was rejected by the studio, and finally we were like, why don't we just get the rights to this mask?" 

The new Scream is slated to hit theaters on January 14, 2022.

Are you looking forward to the new movie? Let us know in the comments below or contact Patrick Cavanaugh directly on Twitter to talk all things horror and Star Wars!