Editorials
A Tale of Two Lauries: Trauma in ‘Halloween H20’ and 2018’s ‘Halloween’
Over the course of the Halloween series’ 40-year history, we have had two films that have attempted to address the events of Halloween night, 1978 as trauma. These films are interested in acknowledging the effect of the experience on Laurie Strode and in seeing how that trauma has impacted her in their respective modern days. Halloween H20 and 2018’s Halloween both take different approaches to Laurie’s fate, but with the shared desire to see how she has tried to cope with these life-changing events.
In H20, Laurie is leading a quiet life under the new name of Kerri Tate. She is the headmistress of a private boarding school in Northern California, where she lives with her seventeen-year-old son, John (Josh Hartnett). Though the events of Haddonfield happened 20 years prior, they still remain at the forefront of Laurie’s mind. She struggles daily with PTSD, nightmares and anxiety. She is on multiple prescription drugs to try to manage her stress and self-medicates further with alcohol. She has tried just about every therapy option there is, but to no avail. Her inability to move past the events of Halloween have driven a wedge between her and John. He is as much a caretaker as he is her son, and when the story opens, the audience can see the toll that her struggles have taken on their relationship.
Laurie lives in terror each Halloween that her brother Michael will find her. Although she saw Michael burn at the end of the second film, she knows in the back of her mind that he is still out there, and that one day, he will return. This year, 20 years after the initial events, he does.
In the 2018 Halloween, we see a Laurie that has handled the decades following the trauma very differently. Though absolutely scarred by her ordeal, Laurie used the time that followed to prepare. Laurie has spent her life hoping and praying that Michael would escape from Smith’s Grove so that she would have the opportunity to end what was started 40 years ago.
The result is a woman whose primary focus is being able to protect herself and her family from the inevitable. She learned about weapons, survival tactics, and defense. She turned her home into a fortress. She placed the highest priority on survival – even higher than the well-being of her daughter, Karen (Judy Greer). Though she believed she was doing the right thing in teaching Karen to take care of herself, Laurie’s obsession with protecting her family from the Boogeyman made her a less than ideal mother, and her parental rights were eventually terminated. She lost everything that she had – her daughter, two marriages and every relationship in her life – because of her obsession with Michael.
We have two Lauries, both traumatized, but one obsessed with trying to outrun Michael and one obsessed with trying to run toward him. Laurie as Keri Tate fled across the country, changed her name, and tried everything she could to erase the memory of Michael from her mind. Laurie in 2018 has stayed in Haddonfield, and while she barricades herself in her bunker-like home, she has prepared for Michael’s inevitable return. Though she fears him more than anything, the idea of finally taking him down has become all-consuming, and she has built her entire world around it.
Ultimately, the vanquishing of a monster (in H20, Laurie’s brother, and in 2018, the return of The Shape) is the act that is able to help both versions of the character address and cope with their trauma. In H20, when Laurie locks the campus gate, she turns the tables by becoming the hunter, rather that the prey. She stops running from Michael and invites him to meet her on her own turf. In the 2018 film, Laurie is able to take on the thing that she has been fearing for 40 years with the help of her daughter and granddaughter. The relationships that have been broken over her lifetime are reforged and together, three generations of Strode women fight back against Laurie’s monster.
Both of these films offer thoughtful perspectives on the path that Laurie’s life might have taken as the result of the events of the original Halloween. As these two versions of adult Laurie are forced to confront their pasts, we see the different ways in which trauma can manifest, haunt, and ultimately be defeated.
There’s a lot of reading left to do in 2026, between the glut of summer releases and the approach of fall, when horror titles get a special push from publishers, but this has already been an incredible year for horror literature.
Some of the biggest names in the genre have turned in outstanding work, rising stars have made their mark, and we’re only halfway through the year.
To celebrate the midway point of 2026, with plenty of horror books still to come, we’re taking a look back at the best horror books we’ve read this year so far, listed alphabetically by author.
If you missed any of these books earlier in the year, consider this your reminder to catch up.
Japanese Gothic by Kylie Lee Baker
A student running from a crime he may or may not have committed escapes to his father’s country home in Japan, only to find himself haunted by strange apparitions, while in the past, a young samurai tries to find salvation for her family and finds a door to the future instead. Kylie Lee Baker’s Japanese Gothic begins with this dialogue between past and present, and then blossoms into so much more, a cross-time ghost story about old wounds and what it really takes to finally heal them. I got so happily lost in this one that I would have read at least 200 more pages.
Persona by Aoife Josie Clements
In this tale of shut-ins, sex workers, artists, and the horrors they both summon and recoil from, Aoife Josie Clements weaves something that feels less like a story to be experienced and more like a psychic wound to be endured, and I mean that in the most complimentary way possible. Evocative in its prose and nightmarish in its imagery, Persona is a story of the masks we wear, and the understanding that not all of our masks are particularly pretty or even easy to breathe through. It’s a dense, literary, unnervingly vicious book, and while it’s already attracted an audience, it deserves a much bigger one.
Dead First by Johnny Compton
Johnny Compton’s latest novel opens with a throwing down of the gauntlet, a sequence that made me instantly think “How on Earth is he going to top this?” It’s a story that begins with a billionaire hiring a private investigator to determine why, despite trying in many brutal ways, he cannot die. That premise, and the scene which sets it all off, is so alluring and delightfully gruesome that you almost can’t believe it’s the way a book begins, and then Compton just keeps going, delivering a supernatural mystery that I could not put down.
Make Me Better by Sarah Gailey
A woman grieving for the life she wanted visits a mysterious island renowned for the healing salt its residents harvest and sell, seeking renewal and relief. What she finds instead is a strange cult with a twisted history with surprising resonance in her own life, and a people who are more than willing to grant the relief she wants, for a price. Laced with beautiful prose and moments of profound realization alongside folk and even cosmic horror, this is vintage Sarah Gailey.
Partially Devoured by Daniel Kraus
If you love horror film history and analysis, Partially Devoured is an essential. Written by Pulitzer Prize-winner Daniel Kraus, the book is a deep dive into his favorite movie of all time, George A. Romero‘s Night of the Living Dead, complete with exhaustive research into the making of the film and passages of deeply moving memoir woven in. If you’ve ever wanted to know what the eerie music that opens the film is called while also bursting into tears at how horror movies can save your life, this is a must-read.
Wretch by Eric LaRocca
Our reigning King of Extreme Horror, Eric LaRocca weaves books of uncommon beauty out of the most nightmarish parts of humanity, and Wretch is no exception. The story of a grieving man who longs for relief and searches for it amid a strange support group that might be a cult, Wretch is a brutal journey into the darkest part of us all, and explores what salvation we might find when we get to the rotten core of the world and peel back its layers. LaRocca’s on a tear of great work right now that few other genre writers can match.
Headlights by CJ Leede
A mystery, a serial killer horror show, a tribute to Stephen King‘s The Shining. All of these things describe CJ Leede’s Headlights, and yet they don’t begin to cover the full breadth of horror awaiting you in this novel. The story of a former FBI agent drawn back into the cold case that haunts him most, it’s a shocker brimming over with vivid moments that’ll live behind your eyes. CJ Leede has now published three novels, and they’re all bangers, so it’s time to get on board if you haven’t already.
It Came From Neverland by Cynthia Pelayo
Cynthia Pelayo has been one of our finest genre writers for years now, but It Came From Neverland is my favorite thing she’s written, and it’s not even close. A dark take on Peter Pan from the perspective of an adult Wendy Darling living in World War I-era London, Pelayo’s book works as both a satisfying horror narrative and a rich exploration of what it really means to never grow up. The horror never loses its potency, but it’s the search for the meaning behind the Peter Pan phenomenon in our own lives, and what we can do about it, that sticks with me most.
Filth Eaters by Ito Romo
Ito Romo’s Filth Eaters is a slim volume, one you can read in just a couple of hours if you’ve got the inclination, but it has the feel of a generation-spanning epic. The story of a breed of vampires born in Central America, the European vampires who encounter them, and the offspring they eventually produced, it spans centuries and packs loads of juicy lore into its pages while never losing its grip on character and narrative drive. I would read hundreds more pages of this world, but I’ll settle for this uncommonly grand-scale novella for now.
Dead But Dreaming of Electric Sheep by Paul Tremblay
A former pro gamer gets a job at a tech company to pilot a brain-dead human body across the country, and so Paul Tremblay’s sci-fi-horror juggernaut begins. Indebted to Philip K. Dick, the primal snarl of Harlan Ellison, and the quirky comedy of The Big Lebowski, and yet wholly original, this is a towering and ambitious novel by one of horror’s most respected voices. What starts as a high-concept tech thriller soon becomes a startling meditation on the value of stories, who gets to tell them, and what happens when we cede too much control to machines we don’t understand. It’s a stunner.
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