- Jamie Lee Curtis insisted she did her own stunt where her face is thrown into a prop glass cabinet.
- "I was reluctant — if not trying to forbid it — but it happened," said director David Gordon Green.
Jamie Lee Curtis wanted to close out her career as scream queen Laurie Strode with a bang, and nobody was going to stop her.
In "Halloween Ends," the coda to the latest trilogy in the beloved horror franchise, which seemingly marks the end of Curtis' time as the character she's played since 1978, the star insisted on doing her own stunts in the movie's finale in which Strode faces off against villain Michael Myers one last time.
"I would say 98% of the stunts are her doing them," director David Gordon Green told Insider about the final fight. "Actually, her double only did two shots."
Green said that in setting up the sequence, Curtis and the actor who plays Michael Myers, James Jude Courtney, were both brought in ahead of time and did a walkthrough of the scene so they could give suggestions on how to pull off this big moment in horror movie history.
Green said that's when Curtis revealed a stunt she wanted to do on her own."She said, 'I want him to grab me by the hair and smash me into the glass,'" Green recalled Curtis telling him about a prop glass cabinet they were using in the scene.
"And I was thinking, I still got two more weeks to work with you, I can't have shards of glass in your face," Green said. "But she did it. That's her face going in the glass. That stunt was her idea. I was reluctant — if not trying to forbid it — but it happened and it looks great."
Here's how the shot looks in the movie:
—Jason Guerrasio (@JasonGuerrasio) October 17, 2022
"Halloween Ends," currently in theaters and on Peacock, has been bashed by the critics due mainly to it introducing a new villain and keeping Myers off screen for half of the movie.
Variety called it the franchise's "most joylessly metaphorical and convoluted entry," while it also has a lowly 39% Rotten Tomatoes score.
But the way Green sees it, it's no fun doing a franchise like "Halloween" unless you take big swings.
"It's tricky because you want to invite the fans to the party, but you also want to give something that's 100% of your creative energy," Green told Insider over a Zoom chat about his mindset in making the third movie. "You've got to swing for a few, you don't always hit them ... but why not take the risk at this point?"