Scream 6 Won't Have A 'Pratfalling' Ghostface — This Time, He's All Business

A cornerstone of the "Scream" franchise is comedy. The film's exaggerated and nearly silly kills, at times, are part of what make the films so much fun. That said, there's always been a serious undertone to the narrative, as what's going on in them isn't exactly happy-go-lucky. In "Scream 6," Ghostface himself is going to take on much more of a hardened killer persona than they have in the past.

In a recent interview with SFX Magazine (via DigitalSpy), the film's co-director Tyler Gillet told the publication:

"There are a tonne of fun, wonderful, classic Ghostface moments, but it's not the pratfalling Ghostface. We love that, but for this to be scary and to achieve a level of visceral tension, we wanted to put the character more in the real world. If Ghostface is trying to get through a door, it's going to happen! There's no giving up. When he's in pursuit, the pursuit doesn't end until he's achieved his goal."

He added that will mean "a more brazen streak" than any of the prior films, and noted that the character will now be "willing to strike in front of whole groups of people." Pretty hardcore, to be honest. Gillet noted, "We have tried to turn the volume up on that. I think for this movie to work, and for it to work specifically in this setting, there had to be a level of relentlessness that we maybe haven't seen before."

The upcoming film's co-directing team—Tyler Gillet and Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, two of the directing collective Radio Silence—have actually spoken about this "brazen" new Ghostface before. Last month, Bettinelli-Olpin told Total Film, "We wanted to make this really different, while still having all the stuff you love. Having a bolder, more brazen Ghostface was a big part of that."

What's fun about having a more hardcore Ghostface is the idea that the movie is going to really ramp up the slasher element and, in turn, the scares. Obviously, we all love the laughs we get from the "Scream" franchise, and I highly doubt that's going away, but we sit down to watch these movies because they follow a psychopath through a string of suburban murders. We want our heart rates to elevate, we want to see the intensity. It will be interesting to see those elements be kicked up a notch—and how well they end up landing. 

"[Scream 6] starts, and it just goes," Gillett told Total Film in the same interview for the February 2023 issue. "So there aren't really these large pockets to talk about other movies. It of course has all of the fun nods and meta-commentary. But we really loved how accelerated this story is. It felt like a reflection of how accelerated the process of making it was."

"Scream 6" arrives in theaters in the United States on March 10, 2023.