Halloween has. The, directed by John Carpenter and written by Debra Hill, centred around teenage babysitter Laurie Strode, who is hunted and tormented by serial killer Michael Myers. In the end, she has triumphantly survived (but is scarred for life), the perfect embodiment of the Final Girl trope that has become an essential component of horror. (That Final Girls like Laurie were archetypically virginal or chaste while their murdered female friends were sexually confident and active has inspired decades of thesis papers and often reductive academic arguments.) But this latest instalment, which ignores all the other sequels in between, takes a more nuanced approach: now a grandmother, Laurie is haunted by her trauma, and desperate to reclaim control over her own life — by any means necessary. It’s an arc that reflects the struggle that so many women are facing in confronting their own aggressors, many of whom have also remain unscathed for years.