Editorials
So Laurie is Basically Dr. Loomis in the New ‘Halloween,’ Right?
Those of us who weren’t at CinemaCon didn’t actually *see* anything in regards to David Gordon Green’s Halloween this week, but we did learn a handful of things about this October’s sequel to the original classic. The first footage from the film was shown off at the event, which is allegedly going to be coming online within the next couple months.
So what did we learn? Things Jamie Lee Curtis said at CinemaCon, along with descriptions of the footage that flooded social media, have revealed to us the basic plot details. As we already knew, the new movie takes place 40 years after the events of the original, with all sequels retconned out of existence. Michael Myers has been locked up in an asylum for the past 40 years, and he again escapes in Gordon Green’s film. Only this time, Laurie isn’t a helpless victim for him to torment. This time, Laurie is *ready.*
As Eric Vespe wrote in his recap of the footage for Rooster Teeth, “Jamie Lee Curtis’ Laurie Strode is no damsel in distress here. In fact I don’t think there was one shot of her being afraid. Quite the opposite. She’s not only prepared for this moment (having rigged her house with various safe rooms, weapons and hidden compartments), she’s been hoping for it. At one point she even says that she prays [Michael] gets out someday so she can kill him. Laurie is hunting him just as much as he’s hunting his victims.”
One person who is very much not ready for the arrival of Michael Myers is Allyson Strode, Laurie’s granddaughter. And… hey wait a second… this all sounds *really* familiar.
The young woman in danger. The grizzled vet who’s hunting Michael. Is the new Halloween a new take on the original, with Allyson as Laurie and Laurie as Loomis?
Andi Matichak as Allyson Strode
Earlier this month, Jamie Lee Curtis spoke a bit about Halloween, noting that she had seen a trailer and it was “terrifying.” That was the obvious headline of that particular story, but Curtis also said something else in the interview…
“If I had had my druthers, I probably would’ve called it Halloween Retold. Because it’s being retold,” Curtis explained to Yahoo. “It’s the original story in many, many, many ways. Just retold 40 years later with my granddaughter.”
That wasn’t the first time Curtis had referred to David Gordon Green’s Halloween as something of a retelling of John Carpenter’s, so we kind of figured that Laurie’s granddaughter would essentially be playing the role of a new Laurie. But it wasn’t until CinemaCon earlier this week that it became pretty clear what Laurie’s role in all of this is.
At CinemaCon, Jamie Lee Curtis described the film as “old school meets new school with Laurie at the center of it… who has turned into a warrior.”
She added that Laurie is “determined to keep Michael locked up forever.”
Add to all of this that we know Laurie wields a .357 magnum in the new film, the same type of gun Dr. Loomis used throughout the original franchise, and it doesn’t require a rocket scientist to ascertain that Gordon Green’s Halloween is indeed a “retelling” of the original movie, only 40 years later and with some roles cleverly reversed.
Laurie Strode has become Dr. Loomis, so to speak. And 40 years after Michael Myers killed her friends and altered the course of her life, she’s fighting back to save a young girl who’s being pursued by Michael Myers on a Halloween night in Haddonfield.
It all just seems so right, doesn’t it?
The trailer for Ti West’s upcoming adaptation of A Christmas Carol raised a lot of eyebrows when it dropped earlier this week. While plenty of folks initially dismissed Ebenezer as a derivative project meant to cash in on the recent wave of unnecessary prequels that expand the backstory of beloved characters (such as 2023’s Wonka), Charles Dickens’ original novel already made a point of exploring Ebenezer Scrooge’s origins in detail – meaning that this new film is likely just a particularly faithful adaptation of the source material under a different name.
Couple that with the fact that the movie is being helmed by a genuine horror auteur and I think it’s safe to say that the latest iteration of the first modern ghost story is in good hands.
That being said, one detail that immediately jumped out at me during the brief teaser (other than a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it nod to Johnny Depp’s iconic bedroom death scene from the original A Nightmare on Elm Street) is the fact that many of Ebenezer’s ghosts appear to have been directly lifted from the iconic John Leech illustrations that accompanied the first edition of Dickens’ novel.
Here are a couple of stills from the trailer compared to the original artwork:
The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
The Phantoms in ‘A Christmas Carol’ and ‘Ebenezer’
Marley’s Ghost in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
Mainly working with old-school wood and steel engravings that would later be transferred to print, Leech was instrumental in crafting the iconic look of history’s most influential phantoms – especially since Dickens is said to have been deeply involved with the creation of these so-called “comic illustrations.”
And since the novel is commonly said to have popularized spiritualism in Victorian England, much of the ghostly iconography that we still see in genre media to this very day (including some of Ti West’s previous films) can be traced back to the author’s partnership with Leech.
Ebenezer won’t be the first A Christmas Carol adaptation to borrow heavily from these designs, but I can appreciate how Ti West is incorporating an important part of horror history into his latest film.
Ebenezer will be available in theaters starting November 13.
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