Spoilers! Jamie Lee Curtis addresses that ‘incredible, inevitable’ ‘Halloween Ends’ finale
Michael Myers, Jamie Lee Curtis’ “Halloween” heroine Laurie Strode won her last fight for survival in trilogy closer “Halloween Ends.” But the finale leaves fans with the question of what exactly this happy ending means for her.
Set after the events of 2018’s “Halloween” and 2021’s “Halloween Kills,” the new film finds Laurie being ostracized in her hometown of Haddonfield because she’s blamed for its bloody history. She meets a fellow ex-babysitter and trauma victim, Corey (Rogan Campbell), who begins dating Laurie’s granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichak). But he falls under the evil sway of Michael, who’s been hiding underground since murdering Laurie’s daughter. After Laurie puts a stop to Corey’s bloody reign of terror – and Allyson blames her grandma for his death – Michael (played by James Jude Courtney) shows his masked face for a brutal kitchen showdown with Laurie.
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She crucifies him on a table with scissors. With help from Allyson, Laurie uses a large knife to cut Michael’s throat and wrists, and they watch as he bleeds out.
Curtis wanted a violent fight that was “this incredible, inevitable blending of these two people physically,” the actress says. “There has to be an intimacy. There’s a moment where he’s behind her and it’s not sexual, of course, but it is intimate.”
It’s a bloody shame Jamie Lee Curtis didn’t get a better sendoff
Ultimately, Green was struck by a line in the script from a scene where Laurie runs into old friend Frank Hawkins (Will Patton), and there’s a little spark between them as Frank talks to her about going to see the cherry blossoms. The director found the reference “charming” and it led him to an ending where, after Michael’s corpse is paraded through town and then crushed into pieces in a compactor, Frank and Laurie sit peacefully on a porch as “a little callback to that moment of flirtatiousness,” Green says.
All of the ‘Halloween’ movies
Does that mean Laurie’s now been infected by “The Shape” of evil? “I think probably,” Green says. “I don’t know how you couldn’t. I guess I’ll say, is that infection able to be remedied?”
For the filmmaker, “Halloween Ends” is ultimately “an examination, in hopefully an entertaining way, of how evil manifests,” he adds. “You’re in a hospital or on a subway, you’ll see a look in an eye that stings you, that moves you, that affects you, that you walk away with. You don’t know if it’s hurt, if it’s harm, if it’s evil, what it is. Sometimes it’s just your own vulnerability looking back at you in the reflection of someone’s eyes There is a very powerful moment there that’s inevitably infectious. And then how we treat that becomes the conversation we have after we walk out of the film.”
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