By all accounts, David Gordon Green’s Halloween is going to be the best entry in the franchise since the 1978 original. Advance reviews are glowing, claiming the film is genuinely scary and disturbing but also cinematically brilliant. That’s the exact sweet spot that John Carpenter’s original occupies, and from all accounts, this is a horror project with an enormous amount of care that’s gone into it.
That sense has only been underlined by Jamie Lee Curtis’ explanation of how the crew treated her when she returned to the role of Laurie Strode. In an interview with Deadline, she recounted the following story:
When I approached the truck to do my alone acting work in an empty truck, with 100 people surrounding her, the entire crew wore name tags that said “We are Laurie Strode.” What they were saying to me, what they said in that moment, was that the trauma that happened to Laurie Strode, they were all part of it. They were all carrying her, caring for her, and hoping to deliver her from evil. And that was incredibly emotional for me, just the gesture of that.
She then went on to explain her thinking behind where Laurie Strode would logically be after surviving the events of the original. After all, being pursued by an apparently invincible homicidal maniac isn’t something you just shrug off.
Very clearly, Laurie Strode had no help. She had no mental health services, a group of psychologists didn’t descend on Haddonfield. I believe Laurie Strode went back to high school two days later with a bandage on her arm, and that’s about it. I don’t think people talked about it, and so for me the exploration of trauma was integral to, not only the writing, but for then, the performance.
At this point, I don’t think I could be more hyped for Halloween. The original is one of my all-time favorite horror movies and still stands up to this day (if you’re skeptical, just check out the amazing opening scene). This sequel sounds like it’s set to do justice to that film, taking what made it so special and bringing it to life in 2018. Plus, the work put into it from Nick Castle (the original Michael), a new John Carpenter score and, of course, Jamie Lee Curtis returning as Laurie Strode are all huge plusses. Roll on October 19th!
