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One of the curious trends of the 2010s has been the stealth “return” of horror as a dominant force in cinema. I use air quotes there because horror, as a genre, has never really gone away as it’s fundamental to storytelling as a craft, same as drama or romance. However, horror has undeniably changed in how it’s perceived and how its made in the 2010s versus previous genres.
There are a lot of factors to this like the rise of indie art-house horror hits like Babadook, It Follows, and The Witch as well as the return of summer horror blockbusters like The Conjuring and Purge franchises. The biggest changeup, though, is in the spread of horror influences and how we’re making new films.
Despite the 2010s as an age of franchises and cinematic universes horror has doggedly rejected those trends, settling more into a ton of very individualistic and different films between one or two actual franchises. There’s not a lot of common ground between stuff like Lights Out, IT, You’re Next, and Krampus but they were all sizeable horror hits.
Even among the heavily sequalized horror series like Insidious, they don’t have the same spread and impact as predecessors like Nightmare on Elm Street, Scream, or Saw. Now, in the waning days of the 2010s, that seems like it might be on the road to change with the coming of Danny McBride’s Halloween reboot, which will see the return of series star Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie Strode.
If you’ve managed to dodge all familiarity with the Halloween franchise or have only seen the Rob Zombie films, a history. The franchise revolves around Michael Myers, a murderous escaped mental patient who killed his sister as a child and returns home one Halloween night to kill more people.
The main protagonist of the film is Laurie Strode, a local teen, and babysitter who ends up the only one of Myers’ targets to actually survive and fight him off. Alongside Ripley in fellow 1978 foundational horror film Alien, Laurie helped cement the concept of “final girls” in horror and is one of the genre’s icons of the ‘80s and ‘90s.
Even though Laurie is one of the three most important characters in the franchise her relationship with Halloween films after the first one is a little spotty. She returned for the sequel where it was revealed she was secretly Michael Myers’ sister. It’s a really dopey twist that doesn’t make much sense as a direction to take things but has definitely stuck with the franchise.
After the failed anthology experiment of Halloween 3: Season of the Witch, Jamie Lee Curtis declined to return for the fourth film so her character was killed in an off-screen car accident. Here the focus shifted to her daughter Jamie Lloyd, who was the center of the franchise for the next few films before she got killed off in Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers.
That film ended up an unsalvageable mess and, combined with the tragic death of Donald Pleasance who’d been part of the series since the first film, the producers elected to do a soft reboot of the series and bring back Jamie Lee Curtis for it. That gave us Halloween H20: 20 Years Later, released to coincide with the franchise’s 20 year anniversary much like Curtis’ upcoming film with coincide with the 40th anniversary.
It’s a very slick, ‘90s style horror movie with that “CW series drama” look to the characters you had in the wake of Scream. The film throws out all continuity after the second film and also gave Laurie a son John, played by Josh Hartnett.
H20 made big bucks for the franchise so had to get a sequel, which Curtis wanted no part of. She only agreed to be in the film as long as her character died in the first 15 minutes and the film, Halloween Resurrection, doesn’t even mention her son John. After that came the reboot duology by Rob Zombie where Laurie was a much less likable character.
In fact, in Rob Zombie’s Halloween 2 Laurie has a bizarre psychic/quasi-mystical connection to Michael Myers and ends the film becoming a serial killer in her own right. That idea actually isn’t too far off from previous entries as her daughter Jamie Lloyd went through a similar arc in Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers.
All of that said, I can’t say I’m that psyched for Jamie Lee Curtis’ return t the role of Laurie Strode in the upcoming film. I understand people who are excited for it in much the same way I’m sure the Halloween producers understand it. Middle-aged childhood favorites returning as awesome badasses is quickly becoming a proven formula to make money hand over fist- just look at all the love Carrie Fisher got from Force Awakens and Robin Wright enjoyed after Wonder Woman.
That’s not a complaint like I said I get the appeal and it’s no more doofy than handing out action franchises every male journeymen actor in Liam Neeson’s age bracket. No, my concern with Curtis’ return to the Halloween franchise is less about why I think Danny McBride wants her in the movie- because he’s a fan.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with fans becoming creators on the thing they love but there’s also nothing inherently right about it either; it’s a case-by-case system. Being a fan can mean a lot of potential for a series, it can mean knowing a lot of cool obscure minutiae in the series to dig up and it can mean having a real grasp of the franchise’s core identity and principal.
However, it can also bring an unwillingness to evolve the franchise to meet the demands of a changing marketplace and I have the sinking dread that’s the case here. I admit, this is probably rooted in the fact I’ve never really loved the original Halloween, but regardless of my feelings on the original film, I think we can all agree that it’s not 1978 anymore.
Even if you loved Halloween 1 we live in a world now shaped by its success and a lot of the tropes it pioneered are feeling pretty tired, especially by modern standards. Hell, I’m not even sure how you build a movie about an escaped killer mental patient without getting into ableism these days, not to mention the setting of a quiet town in America’s heartland has become incredibly off-putting to a lot of audiences.
I’m just saying that the time of Michael Myers, super stalker moving through the background of a frame while Jamie Lee Curtis runs around trying to fight him and save the teens are definitely over. It’s too early to tell if the movie we’re getting will be a genuinely new take on the material or just another franchise greatest hits victory lap but I can’t say I’d be surprised if we ended up with the latter.
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