Jamie Lee Curtis is a final girl — she debuted onscreen as Laurie Strode in John Carpenter’s “Halloween” — the teenage girl in a horror film who outlives her cast mates and overcomes the killer. There’s hardly been a more influential horror film made since. “Halloween” kicked off modern slasher films and Carpenter’s directing career. Laurie, and Curtis’ performance, was the blueprint for later final girl performances like Heather Langenkamp (Nancy Thompson in “A Nightmare on Elm Street”) and Neve Campbell (Sidney Prescott in “Scream”).
Even as her star rose, Curtis never left genre movies behind. She’s returned to play Laurie in several of the “Halloween” sequels — as recently as 2022’s “Halloween Ends” — and in 2019, she was a supporting player in Rian Johnson’s Agatha Christie homage “Knives Out.” The cast and mid-sized budget gave “Knives Out” the sheen of prestige, but detective novels are popular fiction at their best.
Even “Everything Everywhere All at Once” is a sci-fi film — the first one to win best picture, in fact. Even if it’s not the best showcase of Curtis’ talent, it’s another sign of the Academy broadening its horizons. But the wheels of progress spin slowly.
Source From: www.slashfilm.com
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