NEW YORK, Oct. 12 (UPI) — Scream queen Jamie Lee Curtis says her journey as Laurie Strode, which began with 1978’s Halloween, has come to a satisfying conclusion with “Halloween Ends.”
Co-starring Andi Matichak, Rohan Campbell, Kyle Richards and Will Patton, this is director David Gordon Green’s supposedly last horror movie about Michael Myers (James Jude Courtney), the masked and silent serial killer who has terrorized Strode and her Illinois town for years.
The follow-up to 2021’s “Halloween Kills” and 2018’s “Halloween” — which Green also helmed — will be released theatrically and through the Peacock streaming service Friday.
“The movie is called ‘Halloween Ends’, and there is going to be an ending. It is a sad ending, which seems to be an appropriate ending,” Curtis told UPI in a recent Zoom interview.
“I’ve been doing this a long time, and the girl in 1978 — the Laurie Strode I played — was very much a character for me. It was very different from Jamie. I got to dress differently and create a character,” the 63-year-old actress said.
“With the current ‘thrillogy’– we coined the word ‘thrillogy’ today, which I like — I feel like Laurie Strode and Jamie are intertwined in a way that it is almost impossible to separate us.”
The film picks up four years after the last Michael Myers sighting, and shows Laurie trying to live life to the fullest: learning to bake, writing her memoir, attempting to provide a stable home for her adult granddaughter, Allyson (Matichak), and flirting with Frank (Patton), the retired deputy who helped her battle Myers.
“It’s four years later, and you feel like she is no longer consumed by it, but she is actually able to coexist with grief and sadness and the loss of her daughter, but still move forward in her life,” Curtis said.
“Then, of course, she is confronted by the poisoning that that violence did to the entire community, and everything comes crashing down again.”
Laurie’s sense of peace is shattered when she and Allyson befriend Corey (Campbell), a young man ostracized by the citizens of Haddonfield after the boy he was baby-sitting dies in his care.
Laurie is sympathetic to Corey because she knows what it is like to be hated by the neighbors, since many of the townspeople blame her for attracting the havoc-wreaking Michael Myers to their streets.
Corey is torn between accepting Laurie and Allyson’s support and looking to Michael Myers for guidance on how to enact revenge against those who are cruel to him.
Curtis said she is pleased that this chapter of the scary story addresses important issues that involve judgment, forgiveness and redemption as it entertains audiences.
“All three of David Gordon Green’s Halloween movies have Trojan horses of social justice, sociology and community and what we do to each other,” the actress said.
“The first movie was about female empowerment and taking back our own female power, which coincided with the women’s movement and MeToo and Time’s Up, which, of course, was a profound wave of female energy,” she said.
“The second movie was about mob violence — a mob taking control away from law enforcement, saying that the system is broken and we are taking back the system, coinciding with the [real-life] social uprisings of George Floyd and the insurrection on Jan. 6.
“This is a movie about victim-shaming and the poisoning of a community. Laurie has been able to get some mental health help, but not everyone else has.”
Green added in a separate Zoom interview, “If ‘Halloween Kills’ turned Haddonfield upside down and sent the community into a downward spiral of paranoia and blame, then now we are looking at individual portraits of how people are affected by that.”
The filmmaker said he thinks viewers will relate to these themes because it reflects reality in so many ways.
“This is a movie that explores evil and the manifestation of evil all done through the mythology of the Halloween franchise,” Green said.
“If I’ve done my job right, there are subtle things we say along the way, but it never overwhelms the fact that we are in the madness of a midnight movie, having fun, eating popcorn with our friends.”
He said he wanted to include Richards and Patton in the finale because they are veterans of the franchise and he knew fans would appreciate seeing them in this world one more time.
“There’s legacy characters, and then there’s new characters like Corey Cunningham. We’ve got a lot of spinning plates in this one, but to me that is the sleight of hand of it al,l and I’m really satisfied with the way that it turned out,” Green said.
Having accomplished everything he set out to with his three Halloween movies, the director shot down speculation he might return for another outing with Laurie Strode and Michael Myers.
“I feel complete. I feel uplifted, yet kind of bittersweet, because I enjoy working with this group of collaborators so much. To think that this is the last one is a little emotional,” he said.
“These characters have been a part of my life since before I was a filmmaker, so just as a fan and then to be able to be the curator of this franchise for five years is a pretty incredible honor. Then, to wrap it up, feel conclusive and be really proud of the work is really satisfying.”
