A Jamie Lee Curtis Movie Is Gaining Popularity On Netflix
This article is more than 2 years old
Jamie Lee Curtis is widely considered one of the best Scream Queens of all time. So it makes sense that now one of her recent movies is the seventh most popular movie worldwide to on Netflix. Curtis’ 2018 horror flick Halloween is making a climb up the Netflix charts, and it’s making the climb without US audiences since the movie isn’t available on Netflix in the USA. But it is available on Netflix everywhere else, so around the world people are watching Jamie Lee Curtis in droves.
Halloween 2018 takes a significant leap from what fans of the franchise had seen in the recent past. The story brings events to the current day and considers itself a direct sequel to the 1981 sequel, Halloween 2, even though it is the eleventh movie in the franchise. As we jump nearly 40 years along the timeline, we find our infamous serial killer Michael Myers still locked away in the Smith’s Grove Psychiatric Hospital where he is being prepared to be transferred to a maximum-security prison. Myers is being “interviewed” by a couple of true crime podcasters where, of course, Myers has nothing to say. But one of the podcasters inexplicably shows Myers the mask Myers wore during his killing spree, to which again, Myers shows no reaction. During the transfer, though, Michael Myers causes the bus to crash, escaping, with one destination in mind. Haddonfield.
When we first see Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie Strode, she is a mess. She is a drinker who continues to live in her fortified home, very rarely leaving it. She is estranged from her daughter Karen (Judy Greer), and the only person she keeps in contact with is her granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichak).
But now it is Halloween day and Michael Myers is making his way back to Haddonfield. He sees the true-crime podcasters while they visit his sister Judith’s grave, where he follows them to a gas station and does what Michael Myers does best. He kills them. Then, for shits and giggles, Myers takes out the gas station attendant for his jumpsuit. His coup de grâce comes when he retrieves his original mask from the car of the podcasters. Michael is back.
Word has gotten out that Michael has escaped and that means only one thing to Jamie Lee Curtis’s Laurie. He is on his way. She tries to warn her daughter about the imminent danger, but Karen is having none of it. Michael arrives and the killings begin. You can’t have a Halloween without a babysitter or two getting killed and this Halloween doesn’t disappoint. Allyson’s best friend Vicky and her boyfriend are the victims. When Laurie overhears this on her police scanner, she heads to the house, coming face-to-face with Michael for the first time in 40 years. She is able to shoot him in the shoulder before he gets away.
Meanwhile, here comes the twist. Michael’s psychiatrist, Dr. Ranbir Sartain, arrives to persuade the sheriff to allow him to help hunt for Michael. The reality of the situation is the good doctor helped orchestrate Michael’s escape so he could study Michael “in the wild”. Big mistake, doc.
Of course, Jamie Lee Curtis and Michael meet again but how it ends, we’ll never tell. Here is a hint though – Halloween Kills is set to release this year on October 15 and Halloween Ends is scheduled to premiere on October 14, 2022.
Fans were thrilled when it was announced that Jamie Lee Curtis would return as Laurie Strode but were kind of confused as to how her story would play out. The easy solution, which came from screenwriters Jeff Fradley, Danny McBride, and David Gordon Green (who also directed the movie) was to forgo any Halloween movie after the second one and make the 2018 canon. One of the big changes came when they decided not to make Laurie Strode Michael’s sister. They were unsure if Jamie Lee Curtis would even be willing to return to her famous role, so they had to make certain that they, according to McBride via Yahoo, “busted [their] ass on this script to really make that Laurie Strode character something she wouldn’t be able to say no to.”
It worked. Jamie Lee Curtis read the script which she then explained also via Yahoo, “As soon as I read what David Green and Danny McBride had come up with […] and the way that they connected the dots of the story, it made so much sense to me that it felt totally appropriate for me to return to Haddonfield, Ill., for another 40th-anniversary retelling. It’s the original story in many, many, many ways. Just retold 40 years later with my granddaughter.”
Green and McBride were able to bring in the movie for an estimated $10-15 million and were also able to reap the rewards. The Jamie Lee Curtis movie was an immediate hit, eventually earning over $255 million at the box office. It was a critical hit, which is fairly surprising since critics don’t take well many times to horror, but more importantly, the fans loved it. Just as important is the fact that GFR loves it too as it comes in with a solid 7.2/10 on the Giant Freakin Robot movie meter.
Jamie Lee Curtis made a name for herself with the 1978 original Halloween movie. She then came back with Halloween 2 in 1981. Curtis would also reprise her role in the 1998 movie Halloween H20: 20 Years Later and the 2002 film Halloween: Resurrection. But it wasn’t just her Halloween movies that put her in the Scream Queen category. She was seen in John Carpenter’s The Fog, Prom Night, and Terror Train in between the first and second Halloween movies, and those combined with her return to the franchise solidified her standing as one of the true Scream Queens.
If you’re up for a good solid scare and you live outside the United States, check out Jamie Lee Curtis’s 2018 version of Halloween on Netflix.
