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Why Halloween Kills Was Right to Sideline Laurie Strode

HALLOWEEN KILLS, from left: Judy Greer, Jamie Lee Curtis, 2021. © Universal Pictures / Courtesy Everett Collection

With Halloween Ends coming to theaters and bringing an end to the Blumhouse trilogy of Halloween films, the time felt right to revisit the trilogy’s divisive middle entry, Halloween Kills. While the 2018 remake was almost universally acclaimed, with some even calling it the best film in the franchise since John Carpenter’s original, feelings about Halloween Kills are…decidedly more mixed.

Out of all the complaints people had about Halloween Kills (and there were certainly more than enough to go around) the most common one was how the film had seemingly wasted Laurie Strode, confining her to a hospital bed for practically the entire runtime. It’s not hard to see why—the character had just made her long-anticipated return in Halloween (2018), and while her appearance in Halloween Kills could technically be considered a callback to Halloween II, many people felt that it was little more than stalling for time in order to leave a final confrontation between Laurie and Michael for the third film. 

So naturally, today I’d like to talk about what I consider one of the most controversial opinions I have about any horror film: that not only was Halloween Kills correct to sideline Laurie Strode for much of its runtime, but doing so firmly established her place as one of the most important figures in the Halloween mythos, second only to Michael Myers himself. It’s certainly a valid complaint—especially if one of your primary reasons for going to see Halloween Kills was the prospect of seeing Jamie Lee Curtis kick ass once again—but I feel that it’s very much a case of missing the forest for the trees. Where Halloween (2018) was very much built around Laurie Strode’s return, Halloween Kills is built around—and strengthened by—her (temporary) absence. 

Michael Myers at the top of a staircase in Halloween Kills

One of the most clever parts of Halloween (2018) was how it took what we might typically see with a killer-victim reunion and turned it completely on its head: instead of it being Michael Myers obsessed with Laurie Strode—patiently awaiting the chance to get revenge on the one person who survived his initial rampage—she’s the one obsessed with him. She’s spent the last forty years preparing herself should Michael ever return, and while she might have grown into a kick-ass heroine, she’s also an incredibly damaged individual. We don’t have to look far to see the wreckage of Laurie Strode’s life—she’s had two failed marriages, is estranged from her daughter and granddaughter, and her house is less of a home and more of an armory, filled with weapons, blast doors, and death traps. All that preparation winds up being put to good use, but Halloween (2018) never shies away from showing just how deeply traumatizing the events of the original Halloween were to its heroine.

Where the 2018 film goes to great lengths to establish Laurie as the only person even remotely prepared for the return of Michael Myers, Halloween Kills largely functions as a response to that film, asking a simple question: what if this person, who not only survived an encounter with the essence of evil but spent her entire adult life preparing should it ever surface once again, wasn’t around?

The answer? Nothing short of hell on earth. The Michael Myers we see in Halloween Kills feels unleashed in a way we’ve never seen him before—Kills alone nearly doubles the kill count of the Halloween franchise—and this more violent and vicious outing brings out the worst in Haddonfield and its citizens. Not only does Michael leave a relatively massive pile of bodies in his wake, but he also leaves behind a Haddonfield that’s a harsher, angrier place. Together, the two films function as almost two sides of the same coin—Halloween (2018) is a warm, almost nostalgic outing that basks in the glow that comes with the return of its iconic heroine, Halloween Kills is a nightmare about what it would look like if said heroine somehow wasn’t around to fight back against the essence of evil.

It’s not hard to see the connection between Laurie’s absence and this increasingly violent Michael—she hasn’t even made it to the hospital before Michael rises again from the inferno that was once her home, wasting no time in getting back to tearing the people of Haddonfield apart. The connection between Laurie and Michael might have stemmed from nothing more than Laurie dropping off the key to the Myers house for her father that fateful day, but over time the two of them have become inseparable thanks to Laurie’s determination to prevent a repeat of Halloween of 1978, and her being incapacitated—even if it’s only temporary—means that Michael has free reign to terrorize the citizens of Haddonfield practically unchecked. 

Laurie Strode holding a knife at the end of Halloween Kills

Originally, I was thinking of Haddonfield without Laurie as basically being Gotham City without Batman, but this opinion actually changed over the course of writing this: it’s actually much, much worse. See, even in stories where Batman is temporarily incapacitated or killed—also temporarily—he has any number of well-trained allies and partners who can step up to at least try and hold things together. In Halloween Kills, we see not one, but two characters try to step up and take Laurie’s place: Tommy Doyle and Laurie’s daughter Karen. Each of them makes sense as someone who could potentially fill the void left by Laurie’s temporary absence—Tommy is a fellow survivor of the 1978 attack and shares similar trauma with Laurie about that night, while Karen has the training (and trauma) that came with growing up as Laurie Strode’s daughter.

But neither one has her combination of trauma, experience, and preparation, and both of them wind up dead by the time the credits roll around on what is a dark, dark ending for a film, even as far as slashers go. Not only does Michael Myers emerge victorious in Halloween Kills, it doesn’t even feel like a close contest. He finally achieves his goal of making it back to his childhood home, this time with a veritable graveyard of corpses outside instead of the mob of police that greeted him. For good measure, he even kills Laurie’s daughter just before the end credits. 

The message is grim but crystal clear: nobody can even come close to taking Laurie’s place, and this is what would happen if she wasn’t around to put Michael in his place. Yes, Laurie might not have done much in Halloween Kills, but functionally removing her from the narrative—even for just one film—speaks volumes to her importance, not just to the safety of Haddonfield, but for the Halloween franchise as a whole. Michael Myers might have long established himself as the essential component of the Halloween series—let me take a moment to say Season of the Witch was a great film that deserved better and I would have in fact loved it if the franchise continued down the anthology route—but Halloween Kills proves once and for all that someone else is just as vital to the DNA of these films: the irreplaceable Laurie Strode.

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Written by Timothy Glaraton

College graduate. Horror enthusiast. Writer of things.

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