One thing that’s been particularly rewarding about Mike Flanagan’s do-over of Carrie so far is the attention that’s been paid to its antagonists. While previous versions have certainly given us memorable examples of those who would do the eponymous telekinetic harm, even the iconic likes of Piper Laurie and Nancy Allen never got the range of material that we’re seeing here.
While picking on, suppressing, or downright humilating a shy girl should certainly frowned upon, Carrie has taken impressive steps to show us exactly how the characters or Margaret White and Chris Hargensen are on disturbingly similar paths when it comes to two women desperately trying to claw power back in their fragmenting worlds. Despite the fact that both characters could not be more different in age, social stature, or demeanor, it’s been fascinating watching them on their respective “villain” journeys. However, with “Dramatic Arts”, expect both to take sickening lurches closer to their fates.
The Carrie Red phenomenon is a sensation. Starting as a private account on Instagram make to privately humiliate Carrie White, it’s author, Chris, has taken it public and used it to essentially target everyone in school. Whether you’re a cheat, odd-looking, closeted, or even simply caught picking your nose, everyone in Evans High School is fair game for a spot of vicious, online humiliation. Enjoying the control it gives her, Chris uses it to feel better about the indignities that are mounting up in her private life. But after her car is repossessed, we discover that the financial hardships her family is facing are directly caused by the death of Carrie’s father who died on the worksite Chris’ dad owns.
Meanwhile, as she suffers the degrading experience of working maintenence night shifts at the supermarket, Margaret also decides to pull some underhanded tactics in order to regain some sort of self respect. Spreading rumours that her boss is racist among the workers and treating her personal mug in a very unhygienic manner, Margaret’s little, spiteful, power plays seem to give her a modicum of peace.
Meanwhile, a date with local psycho, Billy Nolan, allows Chris to find other ways to regain a sense of superiority by increasingly dangerous acts of cruelty, and when she isn’t getting turned on by Nolan threatening to drop a brick on a busy highway from a bridge, she cooks up a plan to torment Carrie White some more. While Carrie is already emotionally vulnerable thanks to the Carrie Red leak and the news that Margaret has no intention of reclaiming her husband’s ashes, Chris plans to drug her with edibles and take her to the work site where her father was recently crushed to death. As the experience traumatises the young girl, even the kindness of Sue Snell isn’t enough to stop the young telekinetic from rapidly approaching that last straw. Has that goodness locked in Carrie’s heart finally been extinguished?
While we all know the basics of how Carrie ends, it’s been continuously interesting how the show hasn’t just focused on what makes the lead character snap. Other versions have delivered the likes of Chris and Margaret to us already pretty much fully formed, but under Flanagan’s watch, we’re watching both of these desperately unhappy women rapidly ramp up and become the women who ultimately cause Carrie to snap herself. It’s been a fascinating ride to watch a spoilt teen and a fanatical woman gradually have their normality stripped from them and have it replaced with growing amounts of spite, and it’s explored the central themes of cruelty in ways that are worryingly easy to relate to. Well, that and making your boss violently ill by dunking her coffee mug in the fetid waters of a blocked toilet – but we’ll get to that soon enough.
While Summer H. Howell’s portrayal is rightfully garnering praise and the episode (helmed by Something Very Bad Is Going To Happen’s Axelle Carolyn) carefully ensures that her narrative needs are met, the fact that the episode maneuvers it’s two antagonists into a more central role proves to be something of a coup. As I mentioned during my review of the last episode, we rarely get to see the seeds that lead to the overarching spite and desire to be cruel that galvanises the polar opposites of Chris Hargensen and Margaret White. Desperate to make sense of their collapsing reality, their uncontrollable bitterness and selfish nature has led them in arenas far removed from what they once more. Yes, Margaret is a distrustful, paranoid fanatic, but despite being devious and selfish in nature, she’s mostly avoided people rather than challenging them – but consumed with resentment at the World, she’s now resorting to vicious, petty “pranks” to undermine her bosses existence, like spreading rumours that she’s racist and dipping her coffee mug into shitty water and then putting it back on her desk. Dysentery ahoy!
Similarly, we watch Chris tumble more rungs down the morality ladder after hooking up with smugly amoral drug dealer, Billy Nolan and it seems that the two make a horrible mix that push each other to worrying extremes. And yet the tragedy here is that, after being taking in by Sus Snook’s family, after discovering about her father’s cremains, Carrie is told that Chris once was an extremely dedicated friend, who would go out of her way to make the people she cared about happy. But the scene where both Billy and Chris flirt while threatening to drop a brick on moving traffic shows that she’s crossed the line from mean girl to someone potentially dangerous, and her ploy to bring Carrie to the site of her father’s death proves that’s there’s no coming back.
But in an episode where the villains have hit their limits and have convinced themselves they’re fighting back against a world that’s repeatedly humiliated them, we also find that Carrie herself has limits. After experiencing a drug induced hallucination that sees her getting buried alive and then figuring out that Chris is the one behind Carrie Red, the poor girl finally sees her good natured outlook shattered. It’s all the more heartwrenching, because earlier in the episode, Carrie admits to Sue that she’s ultimately glad that she’s experiencing the world as it really is because “it’s better to know”. But while she races back into her momma’s arms, insisting that Margaret was right all along, I would be remiss in my duties as a horror nut not to salute an audacious easter egg that reveals that Margaret works for none other than S-Mart. That’s right, the supermarket chain that has Carrie’s mother cleaning up blocked crappers is the same one that’s hired Ashley J. Williams in the Evil Dead franchise! And while we don’t get Samantha Sloyan’s embittered fanatic uttering the legendary phrase “Shop Smart, Shop S-Mart” (she’d rather die, I’d expect), it’s wild to thing that Flanagan’s cheekily put two horror icons on the same payroll…
Digging ever deeper into its themes of people relying on cruelty in order to make sense of their lives, “Dramatic Arts” finds Carrie once again intriguing toying with our expectations and familiarity with the original story. There’s obviously no doubt we’ll eventually wind our way round to that iconic crescendo, but the fact that show is managing to keep us on our toes is incredibly s-mart.
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Where to watch Carrie – Season 1, Episode 4: Dramatic Arts: