Halloween Kills Earns Official Rating

The release of Halloween Kills is still almost a year away, though the film itself is seemingly completed, as confirmed by the MPA officially giving it an R rating. This rating surely won't surprise audiences, as every installment in the franchise has earned this rating throughout its 40-year history, with this rating likely igniting excitement, and frustration, among fans who now know that the filmmakers have been working on the sequel in recent months and that the film still has a long wait ahead of it before it's officially unveiled. Halloween Kills is currently slated to hit theaters on October 15, 2021.

The new sequel earns its rating for "strong bloody violence throughout, grisly images, language, and some drug use." The last Halloween, however, earned an R-rating for "horror violence and bloody images, language, brief drug use, and nudity." In this regard, it would sound as though the upcoming film is far more violent than its predecessor, which already had a number of gruesome scenes.

This rating makes good on the comments made my the film's co-writer earlier this year, teasing how much more intense the upcoming film is.

"I really can't say anything about it, but I am really excited about it," Scott Teems shared with Movie Web. "I saw a rough cut of it a few weeks ago, and I'm a little biased, but my gut says that people that like the last one will be very excited about this one. It's like the first one on steroids, I guess. It really is the bigger, badder, meaner version of the first one."

A newcomer to the series, actor Robert Longstreet, has also mentioned just how "nasty" the upcoming installment is.

"I don't think I can say anything about Halloween Kills except it might be the nastiest of all of them," Longstreet previously shared with Bloody Flicks. "It has some terrifying scenes in it."

The last film in the franchise was set as a direct sequel to the 1978 Halloween, which required the entire first act of the film to catch audiences up on what Laurie Strode and Michael Myers had been up to since we last saw them. With Halloween Kills, the story picks up right where the last film left off, likely allowing it to jump right into the mayhem and allowing for much more carnage than previous efforts.

Halloween Kills hits theaters on October 15, 2021.

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