Jamie Lee Curtis promises new 'Halloween' will be terrifying, says it goes 'full-tilt boogeyman'

Don’t let the fact that Halloween, the upcoming reboot of the 1978 Michael Myers murder-fest, was written by David Gordon Green and Danny McBride make you think it won’t be a pure horror movie. Their collaborations in the past, such as Pineapple Express, Vice Principals, and Eastbound & Down, have been comedic, but an original face of the franchise, Jamie Lee Curtis, assured us this week that the 11th film in the series is not aiming for laughs — just pure unadulterated fright.

“I’ve seen a trailer and I’ve seen some footage, and it’s terrifying,” said Curtis, who reprises her role of Laurie Strode 40 years after first facing off against Myers in the John Carpenter-directed classic. “They went full-tilt boogeyman. And I’ve never said that in my life, and I will say full-tilt boogeyman for the rest of the year as I go around talking about this.”

Though Curtis has returned to the role before —  in 1981’s Halloween II, 1998’s Halloween H20, and 2002’s Halloween: Resurrection —  there has been a fresh sense of excitement around the upcoming new chapter, which McBride has told us ignores all the films beyond the original. The film is also a melding of the genre’s top minds, with Carpenter returning as a producer alongside horror hit maker Jason Blum (Get Out, Split, dozens of others) and his Blumhouse Productions label.

“And 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,” Curtis said. “There was the idea of, ‘What do you call it?’ If I had had my druthers, I probably would’ve called it Halloween Retold. Because it’s being retold. It’s the original story in many, many, many ways. Just retold 40 years later with my granddaughter.”That’s not to say Halloween is Curtis’s cup of tea. The actress, who has gotten more politically active over the years and will next be seen portraying a war-hawk U.S. vice president in The Pages, doesn’t sound like she’ll be joining Halloween fans at the Cineplex this coming October when the film releases.

“For people who like that sort of thing, I think it’s going to be really fun for them to experience,” she said. “For me, that just doesn’t hold any interest to me. Because I’m frightened enough about all [today’s political climate]. So the idea of now paying money and sitting in a dark theater with a bunch of people and watching something really scary doesn’t really do much for me. But there are a lot of people who love it, and they’re gonna love this movie.”