[Editorial] Laurie Strode: A Portrait of Trauma and Survival in The Halloween Franchise, Part 1

Laurie Strode may not be the first final girl, but she is arguably the most iconic. First battling masked killer Michael Myers on Halloween night of 1978, she’s been fighting and surviving for more than four decades.

Though the role is a celebrated one for scream queen Jaime Lee Curtis, Laurie’s has been a life of tragedy and trauma. Time and again, she evades brutal attacks while watching her friends die, absorbing the weight of their pain and living with the guilt of having survived when they did not. She has become a model of strength and an inspiration for countless horror fans struggling to survive trauma in their own lives. Before her story continues in the upcoming Halloween Kills, let’s take a moment to revisit the trauma she’s survived and the courage she’s shown in the face of unimaginable terror.

Halloween (1978)

We meet Laurie in 1978 on Halloween morning. She’s a high school student with her whole life ahead of her and her biggest problem is that her crush might know she likes him. But hell is coming to her small town of Haddonfield. A killer named Michael Myers (Tony Moran) has escaped from the institution where he’s been locked away since brutally murdering his seventeen year old sister Judith (Sandy Johnson) as a child. Throughout the day, Laurie notices a masked man staring at her from different locations. Unsettled and uneasy, she tells her friends, but they think she’s either imagining him or overreacting and mock her concerned attitude. It soon transpires that Michael is a real threat and murders Laurie’s friends Annie (Nancy Kyes), Lynda (P.J. Soles), and Bob (John Michael Graham) that night. 

Laurie spends Halloween night babysitting a boy named Tommy (Brian Andrews). He tells her he’s seen the boogeyman, the same shape stalking Laurie, watching from across the street, but she dismisses his concerns just like Annie and Lynda dismissed hers. When she receives a strange phone call from Lynda and walks across the street to check on her, she finds the posed bodies of her friends. In the strange house, Michael appears behind her, cutting her arm with a large kitchen knife and pushing her over the banister. He steadily walks towards her bent on murder as she collects herself at the bottom of the stairs. Having seen the murdered bodies of her friends and been attacked herself, she knows he means to kill her and can no longer tell herself he isn’t a serious threat.

Laurie runs back to protect the children she’s responsible for, but first she must gain entry into the house. She bangs on doors only to be ignored by sleeping residents as Michael steadily approaches. This is the first time she runs from Michael desperately searching for help, but it will not be the last. With “Do as I say!” her mantra, she first protects the children, then hides in the closet. It’s the most terrifying moment in the first film and arguably of Laurie’s life. Though she’s seen Michael throughout the day, she’s totally unprepared for the murderous shape that continues to stalk her.

Trapped in the closet with no way out, she screams in the corner as he smashes through the slatted doors. She knows the flimsy wood offers little protection once Michael has found her and watches in horror as he destroys the only physical boundary between them. But Laurie is resourceful. Poking him in the eye with a coat hanger, she is able to escape. She lands several blows over the course of his attack, also stabbing him with a knitting needle and his own knife. Each time she believes he’s dead and turns her back to rest, a natural assumption for a girl encountering true violence for the first time. But he keeps coming back, a perpetual threat that she will come to view as her fate. 

Laurie is rescued by Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasence), Michael’s psychiatrist who confirms that Michael is indeed the boogeyman, cementing his inhuman status in her mind. Her fears are confirmed when, after being shot by Loomis and falling off the balcony, he disappears into the night, becoming a lurking presence who could be anywhere. This is the inciting incident in her trauma and part of her will remain in that closet for years, terrified of the masked killer who will not die. Heavy breathing over images of Laurie’s surroundings indicate that no place will ever feel safe for her again.

Halloween II (1981)

Halloween II picks up immediately where the first film ends. Dr. Loomis searches for Michael (Dick Warlock) and Laurie is taken to the hospital. Still fearing for her safety, she begs them not to put her to sleep. Having been repeatedly attacked by Michael after presuming him dead, she wants to stay awake and alert should he return again. At the hospital, she is indeed sedated and receives care for her injuries. While asleep, she dreams of visiting a boy in what appears to be a mental health facility as a child and has flashbacks of conversations with her adopted mother. We learn that Laurie is actually Michael’s sister. Two years old at the time of sister Judith’s murder, she was adopted by the Strodes at age four after her parent’s deaths. While it’s not stated, this attack and the name Michael itself has probably triggered long repressed traumatic memories from her early childhood. 

Groggy from the medication, Laurie recovers in the hospital. Aside from nurses, and an orderly she knows in connection to a school acquaintance, she is alone. Her friends have been murdered and her parents are missing. One by one, the nurses and hospital staff are killed around her as Michael follows her to the hospital. Once again, she must survive on her own. She anticipates the attack and evades him, running through the hospital with him close on her heels. She’s again rescued by Dr. Loomis and helps him fill a surgery room with flammable gas before escaping to the hallway as he lights a flame. Cowering in the hallway, she watches a burning Michael continue to walk steadily towards her, scalpel in hand. Not even fire can stop his desire for her death.  Eventually, he collapses in the flames leaving the world to assume he is dead.

Here we see Laurie’s immediate response to trauma. She is hypervigilant and paranoid, believing that he may be lurking around every corner. This would likely be her response even if Michael had died by Dr. Loomis’s gun. The extreme trauma she suffered and the repetitive nature of Michael’s attacks would leave her fearful of his inevitable return. Adding to her trauma is the fact that she is attacked in a hospital, the place where she’s supposed to be the safest. If no one can protect her there, do protection and safety really exist?

Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998)

We rejoin Laurie 20 years later on Halloween of 1998. After faking her death to avoid her murderous brother, she now goes by the name Keri Tate and is the headmistress of a secluded California boarding school. She suffers from PTSD and alcoholism and, though she is high functioning, relies on her seventeen year old son John (Josh Hartnett) for care and emotional support. In her dreams she is back in that long ago closet watching Michael (Chris Durand) smash through the doors with his knife. She imagines him appearing behind her in her reflection just as  he did when she first discovered the bodies of his victims. We learn that she’s tried a multitude of different therapies and treatments, but fears that her trauma is simply too intense to overcome. She’s afraid she will never regain control of her life.

Laurie is understandably triggered by Halloween and we learn from John that he didn’t celebrate the holiday growing up. But her neurosis does not end there. She is an overprotective mother, refusing to let John go on a camping trip with his classmates and demanding he live with her instead of the student dorms. She now worries that Michael will not be satisfied with just her death, but will attempt to kill everyone she cares about. John has had to shoulder a heavy burden through caring for his mother and is a secondary victim of her trauma.

Laurie is subconsciously triggered by John’s seventeenth birthday, the same age as Michael’s first victim, Judith, and Laurie herself when he first attacked her. While arguably far-fetched that Michael would target his relatives based on their age, Laurie would probably be triggered by her son turning seventeen regardless of Michael. She was seventeen when her entire world instantly changed; when she realized how vulnerable life is. She sees her son as vulnerable too and wants to do everything she can to protect him. 

Michael tracks her down, attacking John and his girlfriend Molly (Michelle Williams) after murdering their two friends Charlie (Adam Hann-Byrd) and Sarah (Jodi Lyn O'Keefe). Laurie reaches them just in time and after 20 years, comes face to face with Michael through the circular glass of a maintenance door. Knowing his murderous capabilities, she is rightfully terrified. But she also likely feels a catharsis knowing that the wait for his return is finally over and the threat no one took seriously is actually real. 

Halloween H20 is a powerful entry in the franchise because it represents the moment when Laurie chooses to stop being Michael’s victim. Given the option of escape, she chooses to turn and face him, hunting him down with an ax on the school’s campus. She causes him to fall off the cafeteria’s balcony and he appears to be dead, but she’s prevented from taking the killing blow by well-meaning campus guard Ronny (LL Cool J). Once again, the threat she knows to be true is dismissed by others. 

Taking matters into her own hands, she steals the coroner's van holding Michael’s body. While the mechanics of this are a little hard to believe, she crashes the van and maneuvers him into a vulnerable position, trapped between the wreckage and a fallen tree. Here she has a moment of sympathy for her sibling. She hasn’t seen him since that Halloween night 20 years ago and it's understandable that she might want to connect with the brother who’s shaped so much of her life. But she turns and cuts off his head with the ax, forever killing her monster. 

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