Halloween Ends: Jamie Lee Curtis on the horror franchise reflecting our darker side

It’s the role that kick-started her career 44 years ago, and now Jamie Lee Curtis has filmed her final outing as Laurie Strode in Halloween Ends, the thirteenth movie in the classic horror franchise.

And while it has everything fans will want to see – blood, masks and both Curtis and Michael Myers actor Nick Castle reprising their roles for one last time – it’s also saying something about modern society.

Curtis told Sky News that the Halloween films are “trojan horses” – social commentary disguised as horror.

“It’s a horror movie with a central message that we’re monsters, that we have become monsters – what we do to victims, what we do to each other, the word community almost doesn’t exist because we turn on ourselves,” she explained.

“In 20 years you’ll look back on these movies and think that David Gordon Green [director of Halloween Ends, 2021’s Halloween Kills and 2018’s Halloween] was a genius – that he predated the women’s movement, you know, the MeToo movement two years before by writing a movie about a woman who stood up and said: ‘This has happened to me. No more, two years before the social uprisings of George Floyd and January Sixth [the US Capitol attack], we made a movie about mob violence, about groups of people saying the system is broken, we’re taking back the system.

“And now we’ve made a movie about the lack of community and what we do to victims – just go on Twitter or any of these social media outlets and you see what we do to each other, what we say to each other – this was supposed to be good, the internet was supposed to be amazing… and instead, it’s just turned us into monsters.”

But while she may not like the impact it’s had, Curtis – perhaps unusually for a celebrity of her status – doesn’t shy away from having an online presence.

Her Twitter account alone has more than 680,000 followers, and as well as tweeting about her work, Curtis also gives her opinions, something many A-listers avoid doing.

“I’m the weapon of mass promotion, as I am referred to in some circles, because I know how to drive the internet,” the actress said.

“I’ve got a licence, I know how to drive it, I know exactly what to say and do, and I know exactly what to block – I know what keywords to omit from my feed.

“And I have a secret: Don’t read anything, say what you need to say and then get the f*** out.”

Halloween Ends is the final part of character Laurie Strode’s story – one of the first “final girl” horror characters that would go on and influence so many others – a survivor of serial killer Michael Myers.

And it’s not just the worlds of film and horror that the original 1978 Halloween movie impacted, Curtis says she owes everything to that picture.

“It’s given me my entire life, it’s given me an entire creative life.

“That movie led to [my role in comedy film] Trading Places – you’d be like, ‘How did Halloween lead to Trading Places?’

“And it’s because John Landis made a short film about horror film trailers, and he needed somebody to narrate it, who would that be? Oh, that would be Jamie, because I was the scream queen, but then he met me and he realised I’m a complete nutjob and silly, and he hired me for Trading Places.”

Curtis says that John Cleese then saw Trading Places and that led to her role on A Fish Called Wanda, which then in turn led to more roles.

And it wasn’t just her professional life that Halloween impacted.

“I was sitting with [Halloween producer] Debra Hill when I saw my husband’s picture in a magazine and if I hadn’t met Debra Hill, I wouldn’t have been sitting next to her, and when I saw Chris’s picture in the magazine and said ‘Oh, I’m going to marry that guy’. She said, ‘Oh, yeah, he’s an actor I tried to put him in a movie – he’s with your agents’,” Curtis explained.

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“I would have never looked him up, but I called the agent the next day, left my number, he never called me, met him at a restaurant, but he had my number, married him four months later, same year.

“How does that happen? Horror films.”

And despite this being the last film in the franchise she credits for everything, Curtis says she only had positive feelings when it came to making it.

“I was excited about this film, I knew it was going to be very different than the other two – the first two happened on the same night, they pick up immediately, it’s one long thrill ride… And this was a whole different film and I knew that, so I was excited by that idea.

“It felt fresh to me, also something that happens in this film… Laurie has actually gotten the help that Laurie has never gotten – she’s had psychiatric help, she’s had some trauma workshops, she has learned to live and at the beginning of the movie we meet her and for a second, she’s almost happy.

“And I knew that because the first day we shot was that scene in the supermarket [towards the start of the film], and I remember going back to my trailer at lunch and my face hurt and I couldn’t figure out why, and I was like, ‘Did I get bitten by something’? And then I looked in the mirror and I went, ‘Oh, it’s because I’m smiling.’ Laurie Strode hasn’t smiled in 44 years, seriously, I don’t think she smiled a real smile in 44 years, and there I was, smiling!”

Forty-four years is a long time to play a character, particularly one as influential and beloved as Laurie Strode.

For many fans she’s inspirational – the ultimate example of “the final girl” – pursued by evil, but ultimately able to fight back.

Curtis says it’s that love for the character from others that she will miss the most.

“That I represent someone who people love, and because they love her, they love me.

“I get this sort of tag team love because they put in – all of what they feel about her, they put into me: Her bravery, her courage, her perseverance, her badassery they’ve given to me.

“And maybe you can say, ‘Well, I have a little of those qualities’, but Laurie has those qualities, and so I have those qualities, and I really will miss that the most.”

Halloween Ends is in cinemas now.