One of the enduring and most formative Final Girls of horror, Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) took quite a beating in 2018’s Halloween. With the help of her daughter and granddaughter, Laurie used forty years of preparation to defeat Michael Myers and leave him for dead. But it left her severely wounded, and he is the boogeyman after all. Halloween Kills lets Michael Myers loose once again, ensuring Strode’s battle is far from over. Laurie is heard in the trailer saying that Michael Myers transcends, but Curtis believes that so too has Laurie.
Speaking with Bloody Disgusting, Curtis shares Laurie’s mindset going into this sequel.
“She’s a wounded warrior. In the back of that truck, I think Laurie thinks it’s over. We got him. Whether she dies or not, her daughter is safe; her granddaughter is safe, Michael’s dead. I think Laurie could happily die in the back of that truck, knowing that she protected her family and killed Michael. And then the fire engine shows up. That’s why her, ‘Let it burn,’ is so emotional because that’s the possibility that they won’t let it burn. But you have to hand off the fight to other people.”
(from left) Karen (Judy Greer), Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) and Allyson (Andi Matichak) in Halloween Kills, directed by David Gordon Green.
Curtis continues, “When you’re injured, everybody comes in and says, ‘No, no, no. You stay put. We will take care of you. You’ve taken care of us.’ When Tommy Doyle (Anthony Michael Hall) comes in and says, ‘You took care of me. I’m going to take care of you,’ I think that’s also powerful. It’s challenging. It was challenging because, of course, I wanted to be fighting, and I felt passive. As you said, Laurie is not a passive character. But she raised her daughter and granddaughter well, and it’s incredible.”
The trio of Strode women at the center of this trilogy harkens back to 1978’s original, which centered around Laurie and her two friends Lynda (P.J. Soles) and Annie Brackett (Annie Kyes). It feels like an intentional tip of the hat to Halloween producer and co-writer Debra Hill. Curtis confirmed, “I don’t know if you follow my socials, but I posted a trailer that I had asked the Halloween marketing team to do, which are so good at what they do it’s scary. Excuse the pun. Because I felt like what we were missing was the Strode Strong trailer. I said exactly to your point, ‘I know that a bunch of dudes watch football games, and you put these trailers up on football games, but every one of those dudes has a girlfriend or a wife. They’re going to be drawn to the movie because of these women, and you’re not highlighting it enough. I want you to highlight it more.’ And they created these Strode Strong campaigns. I do think it’s Debra Hill’s legacy. And I think she would be so delighted that I’m wearing orange, sitting here drinking a Coke, which she loved. She used to get those Big Gulp Cokes. And that we’re talking about these three generations from Laurie to Laurie’s daughter, to Laurie’s granddaughter, played by the way, by this spectacularly talented Judy Greer and Andi Matichak.”
Knowing that Halloween Kills is the second entry of a planned trilogy, the straightforward question is if Curtis is personally satisfied by Laurie’s arc on the whole and her legacy.
“First of all, I didn’t know it was a trilogy when I did the 2018 movie. I had no idea. I only found that out in the editing process. I’m glad because I think I might’ve been thinking beyond it; I was very focused on what I had to do. There’s so much emotion in the movie. There’s so much loss. It’s a movie about collective trauma, about collective grief, about collateral damage; not just for the person who was initially attacked, but all of the concentric circles of people and grief around her.
“The brutality in this movie is vicious, and it’s terrifying in a way. It’s so much more violent than any of these movies have been. I think it’s also a sign of the times. She thought he was dead. He has risen. He’s like the phoenix; he has risen from the flames, and I think he has been empowered by that. He has transcended on some level, but so has Laurie. And I think that level of emotion and power will be brought into the next movie for sure.”
Halloween Kills releases in theaters and on Peacock on October 15, 2021.