【Married Women’s Sex Party】

Courageous,Married Women’s Sex Party traumatized women band together to fight a relentless male predator against all odds. Sound familiar?

Although written well before the #MeToo movement made its mark, the new Halloweenfilm has landed at one hell of a relevant moment, as not only the latest terrifying installment in a legendary slasher franchise, but a dark, deep dive into trauma and women taking back their own narrative.

SEE ALSO: The new 'Halloween' is everything you'd want out of a new 'Halloween'

Hollywood horror royalty Jamie Lee Curtis returns as iconic "Final Girl" Laurie Strode, seriously traumatized from the events of that fateful Halloween night 40 years ago, when Michael Myers committed brutal murders in Haddonfield, Illinois in John Carpenter's 1978 classic.

But in this chapter, Laurie's no longer the "Final Girl" — academic Carol Clover's widely debated term for the last woman standing in a horror film. She's facing her demons with her daughter, Karen (Judy Greer) and her granddaughter, Allyson (Andi Matichak) at her side — eventually.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

Importantly, Halloweenwasn't penned with #MeToo in mind — it hadn't happened yet.

“[Halloweenwas] written before that theme was brought by the courage of those women, Bill Cosby’s accusers, Harvey Weinstein’s accusers, Dr. Larry Nassar’s accusers, and more and more and more. Written before that, interestingly enough," Curtis told Mashable.

“Women have been traumatized since the beginning of time,” she said. “Since the beginning of time they have been oppressed, and been aggressed, and been violated ... The long-standing belief is that women had to stay silent in order to continue moving up whatever ladder of success there is.

Mashable Top Stories Stay connected with the hottest stories of the day and the latest entertainment news. Sign up for Mashable's Top Stories newsletter By clicking Sign Me Up, you confirm you are 16+ and agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Thanks for signing up!

"The time has come where that is changing. It’s not going to happen overnight, and we will take steps back, but it’s courage. This movie ultimately is about [Laurie's] courage to face it. [Halloween] is a fiction and the world is filled with brave women who are every day fighting back, telling their truth at great expense. And we owe, I owe, a debt of gratitude to them."

Laurie's courage and defiance, of oppression, of fear, of the so-called Boogeyman, sits at the heart of Halloween. Laurie has been preparing to take on her oppressor, Michael Myers for most of her life, and it's her determined, though reluctant preparedness — her fully loaded arsenal, her secret panic room stocked with food and supplies, her yard littered with shot-up mannequins — that is indicative of a woman tired of being found unawares by violence, finally ready to bury her demon.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

Yet, no one really believes her.

Panicking if family members don't answer their phones, or don't have ample security in their homes, Laurie is told to "get over it," and "say goodbye to Michael" multiple times by her family, who are pretty done with dealing with her demons at the dinner table. She lives in isolation surrounded by booby traps, only venturing out for special family occasions and having no real visitors except investigative journalists — if they're paying. Her daughter, Karen, says Laurie is agoraphobic, and has a strained relationship with her mother because her whole life has been spent training to deal with the possibility of Michael's return.

It's this deep dive into the social side effect for victims of trauma and survivors of violence that's often missing from horror film sequels who just want to jump straight into the hacking and slashing — notable exceptions to this are the sequels to '90s slasher films Screamand I Know What You Did Last Summer,which both touch on the impact of trauma suffered by protagonists Sidney Prescott and Julie James. Understandably, these women are truly not OK.

"I was very happy that they [screenwriters David Gordon Green and Danny McBride] focused on the trauma that occurred with Laurie Strode, and that they wanted to put — it’s a bad analogy — they wanted to take off the mask of trauma. They wanted to show and expose really what trauma looked like," said Curtis.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

"What does that violence perpetrated on a young girl, what does it look like 40 years later if it’s untreated, if she hasn’t been given any mental health services? What does it look like in a person? And then, watch that person take back the narrative.

"So, it was both show the trauma and then flip it. Or as Missy Elliott would say, flip it and reverse it. I’m in Australia, wearing a red power suit, and I just threw down Missy Elliot. Just ‘cause I can."

Halloweenis in cinemas now.

---

Featured Video For You

---

Your nightmares are real: This interactive Halloween exhibit explores the dark subconscious

---

Topics Celebrities