[Mother of Fears] Laurie Strode Fights Her Fate and Fear in Halloween H20 20 Years Later

Welcome to Mother of Fears – a monthly column that will explore the various roles that mothers play within the horror genre. Mothers are a staple feature in horror movies, and yet, their stories, motivations, representations, and relationships with their children are so varied and complex that we never feel like we’re watching the same story twice. Every month I will take a look at a different mother from the world of horror, explore their story, and look at how they fit into the broader representation of women in horror.

Few movie timelines are as confusing as the Halloween (1978) series. Not only are there currently three separate timelines, Rob Zombie’s efforts, and the wonderfully weird standalone movie Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982), but the Halloween series loves Jamie Lee Curtis’ portrayal of Laurie Strode so much that it’s brought her back to life twice now. 

Of the three different timeline versions of Laurie fighting off the murderous Michael Myers, each one has ended up a mother who has a very different relationship with her children. While I could talk about any entry in the Halloween series for an extended period, this time I’ve decided to focus on Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998) because, after the original movie, it’s my favourite film and version of Laurie. 

Set as a direct sequel to Halloween II (1981), Halloween H20 shows a world where Michael Myers has been laying low for 20 years, trying to hunt down his estranged sister and finally finish what he started one Halloween night. After the death of Dr Loomis, Michael trashes his office and is finally able to track down Laurie’s whereabouts. 

In a subtle nod to Laurie’s fate in Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988), she decided the best way to escape her trauma and stay hidden from Michael is to fake her death in a car accident and change her name to Keri Tate. She’s now a headteacher in a swish boarding school in California, where she lives on-campus with her 17-year-old son, John. 

Halloween is approaching, and Laurie is understandably on edge. Despite avoiding her brother for the past 20 years, she worries that this will be the year when Michael tracks her down. John is keen to go on a planned school trip over the Halloween weekend, but Laurie insists that he stay at the school, with her, where she can keep an eye on him. This understandably causes a huge amount of conflict between mother and son, as John already has to deal with the pressure of having a combined mother and headteacher. 

Laurie does things such as use her power as his teacher to chastise John for going off-campus for lunch, knowing that she can put pressure on Ronny, the security guard, to ensure John stays on-campus and safe at all times. The added security of the boarding school was no doubt part of the appeal for Laurie. The slightly remote location, large spiked fence, and motorised gate are all there to separate Laurie and John from the rest of the world, allowing Laurie to lean into the fantasy world that Keri Tate provides.

It’s not clear how much John knows about Laurie’s past and faking her death, but he does know that she’s running from Michael Myers. While John is confident that Michael is dead, Laurie’s experience with the Boogeyman tells her that he can survive most things, and could have easily escaped the explosion at the end of Halloween II. John’s scepticism is understandable. For him, the story of Michael and Laurie’s interaction is only a Halloween night 20 years ago. He doesn’t seem to understand how one night could still be having such a negative effect on his mother 20 years later. 

This could be because while Laurie has shared what happened with Michael all those years ago, she has been refusing to deal with her trauma otherwise. Laurie experiences extreme nightmares, relies on medication and alcohol to help her cope, and prevents herself from getting too close to romantic partners. At this point, it’s clear she thinks faking her death was all she needed to reset her life, but she is unwilling to face the deeper problems that are lurking underneath. Instead, Laurie opts for the quick-fix approach, choosing a solution that works at the time, and not thinking too much about the future.

The tension between John and Laurie has been building for some time, but it comes to a head this Halloween, probably because John has just turned seventeen, and Laurie is denying him the chance for some independence with his friends and his girlfriend. John seems to realise that Laurie’s behaviour intensifies every year, and if he’s ever going to have a good relationship with her, he needs to get her to let go of her past. "If you want to stay handcuffed to her dead brother that's fine but you're not dragging me along, not anymore”, John says when he finally confronts his mother about his feelings. 

John is the only person left in Laurie’s life that she cares about, and she realises that she needs to let go a little to ensure that she doesn’t push her son away forever. There’s no point in striving to keep John safe every Halloween if she ends up damaging their relationship beyond repair. To ease the pressure a little, Laurie decides to permit John to go on his school trip, saying it will be good for both of them. However, in typical teenage fashion, John has already planned a double-date in the school’s basement, and so fakes going on the trip to keep his mother happy before sneaking off with his friends.

Laurie is cautiously optimistic that John will be safer with his friends and away from her, but John’s dismissal of his mother’s warnings means he doesn’t think twice about lying to his mother, no one knowing his real whereabouts, and spending the weekend in a spooky and remote part of the school. Laurie’s run-in with Michael has taught her that she should always be on the lookout for dangers. John’s cocky teenage nature means he thinks he’s invincible. If the two could meet in the middle they’d probably have a healthier relationship with danger, but any discussion the pair have had about Michael Myers have ended in conflict, meaning they both remain on opposite sides of the fence. 

Taking a step towards easing her hold over John, Laurie decides to have a serious conversation about her past with her current boyfriend and coworker, Will. She tells him about her slasher sibling, faking her death, and starting her new life as Keri Tate. However, after realising that Michael came back for her when she was seventeen, she fears John’s recent birthday may have triggered Michael’s love for murdering family members again, and soon realises that John never made it to his camping trip. 

One trope that pops up frequently in horror movies is the topic of a high school class often mirroring the events taking place in the film. When Laurie is teaching an English class covering Frankenstein (1818) earlier in the film, a discussion she has with Molly, John’s girlfriend, hits a little too close to home. "I think that Victor should have confronted the monster sooner. He's completely responsible for Elizabeth's death. He was so paralyzed by fear that he never did anything. It took death for the guy to get a clue”, Molly says when talking of Victor Frankenstein’s relationship with his creation.

Laurie realises if she doesn’t get over her fear and confront Michael then she’s going to lose the only person left that she loves. Even though she’s been doing her best to protect John, being in hiding for 20 years has damaged their relationship, and in truth, hasn’t allowed her to feel any safer. She still fears Michael popping up every Halloween, and because she’s trying to pretend to be someone else, she can’t even allow herself to fully experience her trauma and share her pain with anyone. Michael isn’t the only Myers sibling that likes to wear a mask, only Laurie’s mask is having a harder time staying on. We see true flashes of the real Laurie when she’s downing wine while Will goes to the bathroom, or when she’s trying to block out the hallucinations of Michael that plague her wherever she goes.

Once she realises that John is still on-campus, and Michael has a good reason to arrange a family reunion this year, Laurie doesn’t hesitate to grab her gun and head off to find her son. By this point, John has lost two of his friends and realised that the threat Michael poses is very real. Mother and son are reunited when Laurie rescues John and Molly just as Michael is about to corner them. 

Michael and Laurie finally come face to face after 20 years, right when Laurie is at her most powerful, having finally got the courage to take him on after two decades of running. Michael was probably hoping to sneak up on her, catching her in a weak moment, but Laurie defiantly stares at her brother through the glass window in the door. 

Laurie, John, and Molly manage to make it to the car, barely missing Micheal in hot pursuit, but when they reach the school’s gates, Laurie realises she’s about to repeat her past mistakes all over again. If she runs this time, where will she go? Her life as Keri Tate is over, Michael knows where she is and about John. There’s really no way for her to escape this time, live a happy life, and repair her relationship with her son. At this point, Laurie may be unwilling to fight for herself, but she realises she needs to fight for John to give him a better chance at a happier life than she had. 

At seventeen, Michael destroyed Laurie’s life and set her future on a different course. Laurie is determined to make sure this doesn’t happen to John as well, and she’s the only one that can stop that from happening. After sending John and Molly to get help, Laurie breaks the gate mechanism and heads back in to track down her brother. She screams his name as she stalks the campus looking for him. Before, every dark corner of the school proved a threat where Michael could be lurking, but now it’s Laurie that’s on the hunt. 

Laurie manages to take Michael down after pushing him off a balcony. The police arrive, John returns, and Michael’s body is about to be shipped off in an ambulance. But Laurie has been her before. Michael has proven he can survive high falls and still come back for Laurie. Until she knows for sure that he’s dead, Laurie knows that she and John will never be able to relax. Having already fought Michael a couple of times, Laurie thinks nothing of stealing the ambulance and Michael’s corpse to finish this once and for all. 

The end of Halloween and Halloween II saw Laurie either hiding in the corner or running for her life, but in Halloween H20 Laurie knows that running or letting others try to kill Michael doesn’t work. Dr Loomis tried twice (in this timeline at least) to take Michael down and failed both times. For Michael, his endgame has always been to kill Laurie, but now Laurie realises that her endgame is to finally kill Michael.  

Laurie has spent John’s entire life worrying that Michael would come back for her and kill off the last members of his bloodline, but it wasn’t until she was faced with the real threat of losing John that she realises she’s had the power to stop Michael all along. For all these years the threat of Michael has been pulling Laurie away from her son, but when Laurie decides to face her brother head-on, it gives her what she needs to repair their bond and get on with their lives. 

The film ends with Laurie finally gaining the courage to behead her brother and remove him from her and John’s lives forever. There’s a hopeful note in this ending compared to the sting of other Halloween movies. We hope that John and Laurie can repair their relationship. We hope that Laurie can let go of everything that has happened with Michael, now that she knows she’s stronger than him. We hope that Laurie can finally start to live her life without fear and without having to hide huge chunks of her past in the hopes of hiding from those around her. Just ignore Halloween: Resurrection (2002) and all is well.

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