Jamie Lee Curtis is returning as Laurie Strode for the first time in almost 20 years for this fall’s Halloween sequel. As fans are well prepared for by now, the movie will cut out decades of continuity and act as a follow-up to only the iconic first film from John Carpenter. This means we’ll see a very different version of Laurie from the one we’re used to.
While speaking to the LA Times, director David Gordon Green explained where the impetus for his belated sequel came from. Interestingly, it was one line in the 1978 original that informed the new Halloween‘s depiction of Laurie – one small moment that hinted the character had grown over her horrifying experience in the film.
“She has a line in the original film when she’s talking to young Tommy Doyle at the climax of the movie. She says, ‘Do as I say.’ And she says this line with a command that she hasn’t had for the entire film. ‘Do as I say.’”
Green then went on to explain that this line became the mantra for his Halloween movie. This moment inspired a whole arc for the character and set up what Laurie’s been doing with her life for the past 40 years since she faced Michael Myers on that fateful night.
“We took that to be her mantra for our film. She’s taken that pivotal moment in her life, and her recognition of facing her fears, and now has been chanting that in meditations for 40 years. She’s reached a point of a perceived almost psychosis of authority and built from this ambitious, kind of romanticized academic school girl into a woman that you don’t want to [mess] with.”
Previously, Halloween: H20 had depicted Laurie as having changed her name and moved away from Haddonfield, though she was still suffering from PTSD. After Myers’ return, Resurrection featured a deranged Laurie, incarcerated in an asylum and finally falling victim to The Shape. Having retconned these films away, it looks like this older Laurie has dedicated her entire life to training herself to be ready for the next time Michael escapes.
Curtis has previously described her character as a woman with extreme psychological trauma who’s never had the treatment she clearly needs and so has become obsessed with this man – who’s no longer her brother in this continuity – who tried to kill her, fearing that he’ll come back some day. As Curtis succinctly put it, “she’s become the boy who cried wolf.”
The Wolf in this scenario, Michael Myers, will return, however, on October 19th when Blumhouse’s Halloween hits theaters.
