Blumhouse’s upcoming Halloween rebootquel sees Jamie Lee Curtis return to the franchise as protagonist Laurie Strode for the first time in 16 years. As fans are well aware by now, the new movie will cast aside every single sequel released thus far and follow on from John Carpenter’s 1978 original alone, picking up 40 years after Michael Myers first attacked Haddonfield, Illinois, with Laurie ready and waiting for him.
With that in mind, Curtis believes that her character is now filling the role cultivated by Dr. Loomis in the first movie. In the original, Donald Pleasance played Loomis, Myers’ psychiatrist who realizes how dangerous he is and desperately searches to find and stop him when his patient escapes on Halloween night. Pleasance went on to reprise the part for four more films and up until Curtis’ return here, he was the most prolific star of the series.
While talking to Australian breakfast show Sunrise during a set visit, the actress explained how she’s now the new Loomis in the upcoming sequel.
“Laurie has been traumatized and Laurie also understands Michael Myers in a way that nobody else does. In a weird way, she’s become the new Loomis character because Loomis was the one who understood that [Michael] needed to be stopped because he was pure evil. You see, Laurie knows that – and nobody’s paying any attention, but Laurie is…Laurie is patrolling these streets.”
Of course, the big shake-up in the relationship between Laurie and Michael in Halloween is that they’ll no longer be siblings. This was done in order to make Michael more unknowable and terrifying again. Instead, Laurie’s become obsessed with the idea of him coming back to get her and so has been training for decades to be prepared for when he does.
Curtis’ on-screen daughter, Judy Greer, has described Halloween as a “multi-generational, female empowered movie” with Laurie at its center, and we’ll get to judge it for ourselves when Michael Myers slashes his way back into theaters on October 19th.
