Conclusion

To conclude, the films from this corpus show an evolution in the way that violence is used in horror. Women were the main victims of extreme violence in the horror movies of the 1970s. Their deaths served as a reminder for young women to stay virtuous. The women in these movies were often sexualized while they were tortured whereas men did not suffer. Men were killed in order to allow the killer to reach the women who were the real targets. This era of slasher movies was marked by a representation of violence that was mainly aimed at women. They were the victims, and they could not fight back. The violence belonged only to men, who could defend themselves and even kill if necessary. The Final Girl was the emblematic figure of the seventies' slasher because of how she differenciated herself from the other women. As the only survivor, she was smarter and more resourceful than any other character. She is the character that the audience roots for. This pattern was applied to all the slasher movies of this era, they were the rules that created the sub-genre.

However, as feminism progressed, societal perceptions of women changed and the audience was not satisfied with this representation of women anymore. Therefore, with *Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later* came a renewal of the franchise. The movie was aware of the previous rules and wanted to break away from these clichés. *Halloween H20* presented the audience with an improved version of the Final Girl who saves everybody by herself. The sexualization of young women was no longer acceptable and the male figures were not heroes anymore. This movie does not want to glorify the killer. The emphasis is solely on the victims as the audience is placed from their point of view. This is a more progressive film in comparison to the first movie. While it is not perfect, particularly in the way that it tortures women and not men, it is making an attempt at portraying women in a much more positive way than it has ever done before. It shows Laurie fighting rather than going away, and young girls are not only used to be looked at anymore.

The last trilogy of the 2010s and 2020s shows once again a new era of the genre. Indeed, while the previous movie had one heroine, there are now three. Laurie is now with her daughter and her granddaughter. This new portrayal of violence intends to show a certain inter-generational strength, three generations of women fighting. There are no specific rules to violence anymore. The women are as violent as Michael himself and the violence even spreads into the city. While the Final Girl used to be allowed to be violent, in this trilogy anyone can be. As it defies the 1970s' rules of slasher movies, nothing can be predicted anymore. Moreover, it does not simply intend to give women power, it
punishes men who fail them. Most of the deaths in this trilogy are men who could not help the women.

The films of this corpus display an evolution in the use of violence that is inherently linked to the change in societal views of women. The slasher has gone through different waves of feminism and it is clear that as time goes by, it has tried to evolve to represent women in a more positive, empowering way.

This corpus is interesting in that it allowed for an analysis of women in the slasher genre across fifty years of time. Laurie was therefore able to embody all of the stages of a woman's life. She was a teenager, a mother/middle-aged woman and a grandmother/older woman. These roles are each at the center of the representation of Laurie. Each role provides important changes in the way in which she is perceived, which proves how women's roles define how they are portrayed in cinema.

As teenagers, Laurie's friends are erotic objects. The slasher genre in the 1970s presented young women as objects to be looked at. Since Laurie is not feminine-looking, she was deemed "masculine" and therefore escaped this objectification. She is the mother figure of her friend group, the one who is very wise and tries to look out for others.

In *Halloween H20*, she is an actual mother. Her strength is emphasized by the fact that she is a single mother. This movie deals with the stereotypical ideas of "good" and "bad" mothers, presenting the audience with a woman whose extreme violence is justified by her motherhood. It is the only possible justification for her to be so violent, she has to save her child to remain a "good" mother. This idea is pushed very far in that she has to sacrifice everything, she cannot balance her life as a woman with her life as a mother.

*Halloween: Resurrection* introduces a version of the same mother that is much more negative. She has sacrificed so much that she has even abandoned her child to save him. As she is not with him anymore, she has nothing left. She sacrificed her femininity as well as her motherhood and therefore it seems as though she is left empty. She dies because without her son, she has no justification for her violence anymore.

In the last trilogy, Laurie is a grandmother. She defies all stereotypes of older women. She is the embodiment of natural aging. She is violent to a point where she has started to be portrayed in a very similar way to Michael. With this trilogy, the slasher genre is not simply about gore anymore. It is a statement. It disrupts the societal norms associated with older women in an attempt to change people's minds.

Throughout the entire franchise, Laurie is presented as hysterical. When she is a teenager, none
of her friends believe her when she claims to be followed. She is seen as crazy because she is different
and does not conform to the norms of her time. She has no sexual relations, she is an intellectual and
she is not feminine. In later movies, she starts to be helped by her female friends, but men still continue
to treat her as mentally ill and dismiss all her worries. As she gets older, she starts to conform to the
stereotype of the “crazy old woman” that has been recurrent in horror. She is the “freak” of the town
that people mock and avoid. Hysteria is a concept that has long been used against women, and although it
is not considered an illness anymore, these movies show that it has not yet disappeared. The concept
evolves depending on Laurie's age, but the franchise does not progress in that it never erases it.

While Laurie is the most famous character that Jamie Lee Curtis has played, it is not the only
one she has portrayed in horror. From *The Fog* to *Road Games*, she has played many other female
characters that are far different from the Final Girl. They are characters to be looked at. They are
feminine and passive rather than active. They are sexualized when the Final Girl is not. Laurie was the
most impactful of her characters in horror. She became a model for the other slashers of the 1980s that
tried to imitate her success. Laurie remains the character that gave Jamie Lee Curtis her career. It made
her become a Scream Queen and her performance later gave her opportunities in other genres. As Jamie
Lee Curtis was able to grow with Laurie Strode, she was later able to impact her character as well. She
made Laurie stronger and used her activism to make her a feminist heroine.

The films of this corpus have proved that the slasher genre has evolved tremendously over the
past five decades, especially in the way it treats and represents female protagonists. Although Jamie
Lee Curtis has announced that she will not return as Laurie Strode anymore,<fnref n="136" /> she continues to play
very diverse characters. From her portrayal of IRS inspector Deirdre Beaubeirdre in *Everything
Everywhere All AT Once* (Kwan, Scheinert, 2023) for which she used her natural body appearance and
clothes typically worn by women of her age, to her latest role of Patricia Tannis in *Borderlands* (Roth,
2024) in which she wears a more atypical outfit while keeping her real hairstyle, she keeps on injecting
her activism into her roles in order to create a more progressive and diverse representation of women.

<footnote n="136">136 Eeamon Jacobs, ""Halloween Ends' Star Jamie Lee Curtis Signs Document Swearing She Won't Play Laurie Strode Again", Business Insider, October 2, 2022: par.4. https://www.businessinsider.com/jamie-lee-curtis-halloween-ends-laurie-strode-last-2022-10.</footnote>
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