Carrie (2002) Pt. 2

[To read Part 1 of this review, please click here.]

Rik: The other day, you and I were discussing the new series American Gods, which is adapted from Neil Gaiman’s stunning novel. Fuller has proven to be a reliable favorite of mine – chiefly through Pushing Daisies and Hannibal – though I also quite enjoyed Wonderfalls and his ill-fated attempt to bring back the Munsters in Mockingbird Lane a few years ago. (Seriously, I thought it was a cool, edgy try… Eddie Izzard as Herman Munster? Absolutely…) He got a raw deal in being brought into a desperate situation to try to fix Heroes in the middle of its run, but I have liked most of his projects apart from that. (Sadly, I have only ever seen a single episode of Dead Like Me.) And I am excited that he is heading up the latest Star Trek series – Discovery – due out later this year from CBS later, even if I think shifting the show after its premiere to their online All-Access subscription service may not be a wise move. (I am pretty certain the wife and I are not going to spend the extra $$$ to sign up for it, since we have so many pay services already.).

This teleplay was basically Fuller’s third separate scripting job in Hollywood (after writing for Star Trek: Voyager in its last season, but first for Star Trek: Deep Space Nine deep in its run). Fuller also served as an executive producer on Carrie (as he did for Voyager), but as to his level of involvement with the actual production and direction beyond having input on the adaptation he wrote, I do not know. Even though the script includes many elements not seen on screen before (as we mentioned), I would not say the script is a loving adaptation of the novel, as if someone really wanted to prove that Carrie could be done “the right way”. The finished product feels more like rote network fare, has a distinct cheesiness to it almost from the first scene, and is plagued by some amateurish acting from its, yes, admittedly mostly appealing cast (which includes some favorites of mine – Clarkson, Bettis and Isabel – as well as a couple of non-faves: the aforementioned de Ravin and Rena Sofer, the queen of failed pilots).

Any adaptation of Carrie, outside of having to deal with the looming shadow of the De Palma version, is ultimately going to live and die by its casting of the title character and her mother. First, let’s tackle Margaret White, previously essayed in Oscar-nominated form by Piper Laurie (and eventually by Oscar winner Julianne Moore). Here she is played by Patricia Clarkson. Now, it may be a little bit in the too much information department were I to disclose that I have had well more than one not-so-chaste dream about Ms. Clarkson over the past twenty years or so. Somehow, she just does it for me, and even more so with age. Given this, you would think that I would be all over any part she plays, but you would be quite wrong. I think Clarkson does a serviceable job in the role, and my opinion regarding this is really based on my own assumption of what she should be playing instead. I just don’t like seeing her in a role where her sexuality is repressed to an incredible degree – unless one can work a kinky, fundamentalist Christian dominatrix angle into one’s fantasy, and that will just not do it for me… ever. I don’t even like regular fundamentalist anythings. So, the problem is squarely of my own libido.

I think Clarkson does fine in the role, but she doesn’t threaten to take over the film in the way that Laurie and Moore do in their turns at bat, and it is that threat – much in the way that Margaret White’s very presence and lifelong psychosis threaten to consume her daughter’s existence (possibly by killing the girl herself) – that is very much needed in this part. No knock on Clarkson’s acting abilities, but I don’t think she has that extra gear that both Laurie and Moore have shown time and time again that they possess where they can hit an apex of truly unhinged, maniacal abandon if required. Perhaps I also don’t buy the relationship between Margaret and Carrie here because Angela Bettis is nowhere near being a teenager herself, and was, at 28 years of age, the oldest of the three Carries when filming took place. It became almost impossible to believe the relationship between the two, and as I said, part of this is because of my long-standing physical attraction to Ms. Clarkson. It is completely unfair for me to judge someone’s acting performance in this manner, but there it is. I cannot see past this particular glare in my logic. (Despite my insistence to the contrary, I guess that I am quite human after all.)

Let’s move on to Bettis herself. Aaron, you mentioned previously Ms. Bettis’ excellent job in the film May, which is exactly the moment where she stuck in my head, though I had forgotten (or didn’t notice) her in roles previous to May. A past acquaintance at my old, longtime Anchorage gig recommended the film to me for about three months, and I never sought it out on my own, so he finally bought me a copy for my birthday because he was so sure I would love that movie. It turned out that I did indeed love it, and I probably watched May about a dozen times over the next month. It wasn’t merely Bettis that caused my positive reaction to May, as I was really into the pre-stardom Anna Faris at the time, who has a most memorable supporting role in the film. That is not really fair to Bettis, because May is really a shining moment for her, and interesting supporting parts aside, the film is really all hers. In fact, her performance is an indie horror tour de force, though it would not take much to convince me to drop the “indie horror” part and just proclaim it as a tour de force for an actress who probably deserves more opportunities to shine in the same way. Unfortunately, Bettis has never really broken through into the mainstream. Part of this may be due to her looks, which are unconventional to say the least. While I find her personally attractive, she may not be Hollywood’s normal cup of tea. But she keeps working and I delight in seeing her pop up here and there in bit roles. Along the way, she directed Roman, another odd horror-romance somewhere in the neighborhood of May, which starred her May director, Lucky McKee, in the title role. (She also shot her own portion of The ABCs of Death.)

There is more than a small crossroads where Bettis’ performances in Carrie and May meet. First off, both films were released the same year (2002). May hit Sundance in January of that year and was entered in festivals well into the next year, while Carrie was not premiered on NBC until November. However, May did not hit regular movie screens until June of 2003 and then came out on DVD the next month. As a result, the public saw Carrie first, even though May was filmed over a year before. Because the finished product of this version of Carrie looked so dated already when it came out, and because I saw it when it originally aired, it was easy for me to believe that perhaps Bettis used her role as Carrie White as an influence on her portrayal of May Dove Canady, the deeply lonely girl who grew up with a lazy eye covered by a patch and found herself mocked and ostracized by the other kids.

For years, May is kept pretty much imprisoned by her overbearing mother who convinces poor May that dolls are her only friends. As an adult, May fixes her eyesight, but has an overriding obsession that will play a tragic part in her relationships with the people she soon befriends or takes as lovers. For those who have not seen the film, I will leave the plot description there. Like Carrie White, May Canady is awkward and virginal, more than a little unhinged due to her abusive upbringing and seclusion from the outside world, but desperate to find love and acceptance among her peers. To escalate what I started in the preceding paragraph, it is not hard to imagine that the original version of Carrie or King’s novel may have played a part in McKee’s creation of the character of May, and possibly of Bettis’ excellent performance in the role. And because the 2002 Carrie entered the public consciousness first, I am not the only one to have thought that Bettis’ role in that led to her fine work in May, when in fact, it is the complete opposite. I don’t know whether the producers of Carrie saw her work in May at a festival or screening and decided to hire her for Carrie, but it seems clear from the timeframe that we must use her work as May Canady as at least an influencer, if not the primary one, and not the other way around.

Bettis is indeed the best part of the 2002 version of Carrie. Naturally, I  don’t think she equals Sissy Spacek in the role, though I do think she is better than Chloe Grace Moretz in 2013. (We will get to that performance and film eventually…) Since it would be too easy to closely align her take on Carrie with that of May, though there are still major differences, someone who has seen both films may have to divorce their memories of May almost completely to watch Carrie in order to see Bettis as playing a separate character. This was not the problem in 2002 since I saw Carrie first, but May Canady is the defining role in Bettis’ catalogue. Spacek’s looks, especially her eyes and freckles, made her rather unconventional as well, but there was still a noticeable beauty queen look to her in the prom scene where it became hard to imagine that she wasn’t popular already. (In my book, then and now, Spacek is a veritable knockout in that scene.)

Bettis has an “otherness” to her at all times that is both what makes her appealing to me but probably works against her in Hollywood. But in a film where that element of otherness is necessary to tell the story of a girl who is possessed of massively dangerous telepathic capabilities that are largely untapped until she finally is pushed to her breaking point, Bettis may be the one actress of the trio who has come closest to embodying the role of Carrie White in a believably physical sense. (This is not to say she is anywhere near what King wrote of the character, because his Carrie was described as having acne, being fat, and having “bovine reactions”. None of this has never been a part of any adaptation thus far onscreen. I would love to see someone try it though; the film would tie in perfectly with the currently sizzling topic of body shaming and acceptance.) Of the three actresses to fill the role, Bettis is the only one to truly possess that otherness, the alien sense that I mentioned that makes her seem most likely to me to have been cast aside by the popular kids at the school. Bettis’ sharp looks combined with her gaunt but wiry physicality is her most remarkable trait in the role, apart from her acting skills.

And when her character finally makes full use of her powers, Bettis also comes off for me as probably the most potentially frightening of the Carries. While the ballroom scene in this version comes nowhere near the remarkable perfection of the original, Bettis seems genuinely possessed as whatever force has overwhelmed her senses seems to focus singularly upon delivering death and destruction down upon the heads of Carrie’s tormentors, real or imagined. Until late in the scene, Bettis stands stock still, her arms straight at her sides, her fingers held together in spear-like points as her powers are spilled outward in every direction, and even employed on people she cannot see directly with earthly senses. The editing is not nearly as tautly conceived in Carson’s version of the events, and so the film is left relying on the repeated vision of Bettis, perfectly still and staring forward, her eyes wide, as fire looms behind her and the sparks and screams fly from the crowd before her. Especially in a such a reduced (though, ironically lengthier and more detailed) vision of the story, this viewer connected more deeply with her Carrie at this point than any other, and the sole reason is Bettis’ stark. threatening physicality in the role.

Aaron, did you find Bettis as effective in the role as I did, and where did you come down on the dynamic with Clarkson as her mother?

Aaron: I think we’ve actually got a slight disagreement coming up, but first I’ll sign off on your thoughts as to Patricia Clarkson in this role. She is perfectly fine and menacing in the role, and yet lacks the theatricality necessary to really go over the top. On the other side of the equation, we have differing views on Angela Bettis in the role, though we both enjoy her work (here and elsewhere). Bettis may not have been the right age, or the right look for what Stephen King originally wrote, but I find her to be the most believable as a high school student.

You say that Bettis has an otherworldly quality, and while I have found that true of her in other roles, I actually find her the most believable of the three Carries in terms of portraying a socially awkward high schooler. The combination of her body language, stringy hair, not-quite-perfect-complexion, and habit of avoiding eye contact while also awkwardly holding eye contact for way too long when it does happen, struck me as almost painfully realistic. She reminds me of people I knew during my own high school years. Hell, if I’m being honest, she reminds me a bit of myself at my most awkward and insecure. I could actually see this Carrie White as a real flesh and blood teenager, age of the actress notwithstanding.

That also, paradoxically, made her the least immediately interesting of the Carries. Realistic human beings are simply not as striking as the more stylized versions of humanity that normally make it to film and television, and I think this version suffers a bit from that. Because you know what isn’t the most entertaining and engaging thing to watch on screen? A realistically awkward, shy, and uncool high school kid. This was, to hear it from Fuller (in an interview for Fangoria around the time the film was set to be aired), completely intentional. As an avowed fan of the original, Fuller’s stated goal was to make Carrie less of a fairy tale, and more of a realistic tale of teenage angst.

“When we decided to do a remake, we really wanted to ground it in 2002, as opposed to doing a high school show in the ’70s, which is what the original was,” Fuller told Fangoria back in 2002. He also expressed doubts as to his success in translating such an iconic novel, but in terms of cementing the film in it’s timeframe and presenting a more grounded story, I can assure the filmmakers they succeeded admirably. However, that isn’t necessarily a good thing. The fact that Bettis portrays such a realistic teenager actually dulled the impact of her eventual telekinetic murder spree on prom night. You say she’s the most frightening of the Carries during this scene, but I felt the opposite. Sissy Spacek was so alien, with such an angular profile and those piercing eyes of hers, that she looked positively otherworldly, like an alien or a demon, during her big moment. Chloe Grace-Moretz effectively splits the difference between Spacek and Bettis, seeming earthier but far angrier, like rage personified. Angela Bettis is basically in a trance, standing almost stock still for most of the scene and staring off into nothingness. This isn’t to say she’s bad in the role, of course, just that I found the tone of the ending fairly flat, despite the added carnage (this version is definitely the most true to the source material in terms of Carrie’s wide path of destruction). Some of that lies in the directorial decisions, but I also believe Bettis just pulls back a little too much when she should be swinging for the fences in her performance during this scene.

When a movie gets remade and/or sequelized so many times, I start to look for the reasons behind it. Obviously from a studio standpoint the major factor is always going to be money, but I start to look at why the filmmakers wanted to tell, or retell, this particular story. Remakes allow us to chart cultural and societal changes over the years through how different generations tell  the same story, and asking ‘why this story?’ can help illuminate those changes. The problem is this version of Carrie doesn’t give us any real answers to that. This film came out three years after the most devastating school shooting our country had seen (sadly, that record has been surpassed). This film was aired less than a year after the most deadly terrorist attack our country had ever seen. The cultural attitude toward violence, particularly violence in schools, had radically shifted, albeit only temporarily, it seems. And yet Carrie seems to exist blissfully unaware of these events, and so treats the onscreen violence with neither stylistic flair nor nuanced emotion. It’s just there. Maybe that’s a statement unto itself, but I feel it as more of a missed opportunity.

These problems are most likely a side effect of the original plan to turn this Carrie into a weekly television series. Bryan Fuller cited all the proper ‘whys’ when talking about his decision to remake Carrie: he invoked Columbine and spoke of his desire to explore the effects of this sort of violence on a small town and how a person would react to the guilt of having done something so monstrous. It’s likely that Fuller held back on all of that stuff in order to get the pilot movie made and seen by the widest audience possible, so that he could then explore the underlying themes once they’d been hooked. I’d like to rate this movie based on those goals, but unfortunately all we have is this one film. An overlong and generally unsatisfying adaptation of a novel that already had one superlative movie for the ages. 

Perhaps it was unwise to return to that well once again, especially so soon after the financial and critical flop of The Rage: Carrie 2. But of course Hollywood increasingly runs on sequels, remakes, reboot, and reimaginings, so just like Carrie herself, this property would find a way to rise from the grave when least expected.

Rik: At last, that’s all for our discussion of the 2002 version of Carrie. We have one more Carrie that we need to battle: the 2013 version starring Chloe Grace Moretz and Julianne Moore. And contrary to our more recent nature, Aaron and I will make a best effort to have that review posted before October rolls around. See you then!

We Who WILL Watch: The Mist (2017)

Aaron: Well, the roll-out of exciting Stephen King news continues, with the release earlier this week of a full trailer for Spike's serialized adaptation of King's 1980 novella, The Mist, and it looks like there might be a bit to talk about in there.

For years The Mist topped the list of most wanted King adaptations, the one title that would pop up again and again when I had conversations with people about Stephen King movies. It seemed like such an obvious choice that it's a little bizarre to think that 27 years passed between the novella's publication date and the eventual Frank Darabont adaptation. Perhaps Hollywood just needed to get wise to what the rest of King's constant readers had known for years, that The Mist is a gut-punch of a story with a multitude of monsters fans would love to see on screen, and great potential for filmed interpretations. And now here we are, a mere decade later, with a new version of The Mist heading to our televisions.

Take a look at the full trailer below, then keep scrolling to read our initial thoughts...

Right off the bat, I can admit that my enthusiasm for this project is not nearly as high as some of the other upcoming projects. The idea of doing The Mist as a television series is actually a pretty great one, because the novella is open-ended enough to allow for not only continuation, but a wide variety of stories set within its world. The trailer seems to suggest a few major changes to the novella, most notably the idea that the mist seems to have a malevolent presence beyond just the monsters that hide in it. In fact, looking at the trailer more closely, are we sure there even will be monsters in it? Everything we see implies that the only monsters are human. There's a quick shot that at first looks like a monster bursting through a car's windshield, but look carefully and you'll see it's actually a moose someone crashes into while driving. I'm not opposed to anything I see in the trailer, but I also see nothing in it that really excites me in the way the It trailer did. I also have nothing by which to judge the behind-the-camera talent, as the show was developed by Christian Thorpe, who seems to have had a healthy career in Danish television, but whose work I have not heard of previously.

The show seems to have an interesting look, the cool grey-blue of the mist and the warmer yellow tones of what could either be flashbacks or merely just interior shots. The series seems to be changing a lot, and inventing a lot of new characters, which is a necessity when adapting such a short story into an ongoing series. I know some people are going to be upset by the changes, that's just the nature of these things. Myself, I'm a fan of diverging from the source material. If a movie or TV show is too faithful, I start to wonder what the point of it was, because I could always just read the book again if I wanted the exact same story. 

Rik: And yet, we often gripe if an adaptation adds too many new characters and ignores the original ones, or veers away too, too far from the source material, or (and this seems to be the worst offender for many people) doesn't include their very favorite scenes or dialogue in the final product (even if those "very favorite scenes or dialogue" were extraneous to the actual plot of the story or were throwaway lines meant to fill space). Damned if you do, damned if you don't. 

I agree with you that I don't mind veering from the original, but the approach has to feel organic to me, like it could have been included in the original product if the author had seen fit to turn that direction with the characters. Just creating new characters and locations for the sake of creating new characters and locations makes me wonder why they purchased the rights to such a property in the first place. Why not just create an entire new story (apart from the obvious marketing possibilities of using a name brand like Stephen King)?

I am going to say that I am as excited for the new series for The Mist as I am the new It adaptation or the upcoming Castle Rock series. That is, it is still too early to tell much of anything from a mere trailer that isn't roughly the length of the one for that stupid looking movie about the lonely teen boy who lives on Mars coming back to Earth to get busy with a girl (though in a completely wholesome way, of course). You know, the sort of trailer that lays out the entire story to you in strictly chronological fashion, with every beat of the script hit along the way. Here, with The Mist trailer, we don't get that, thankfully, as it is but a taste of what potentially lies within the show. As a result, I am going to withhold judgment on the characters that may be in the new series (honestly, I last read the novella over 25 years ago, and don't really remember anyone in it either, just the mist itself). 

I am also going to not comment on the look of things either, because scenes in trailers are often shown in altered or (more often) incomplete form from the finished product, whether due to effects shots or post-production not being completed, or cut scenes or scrapped footage being added to flesh out the trailer a bit, or filters being overlaid on the product as well. Trailers are often the very worst way to judge a finished film or series because of all these factors. 

The main question for any trailer is this: Did it pique my interest in the property, even a tad? Yes, a tad. I really enjoyed the Darabont version of the story (reminding you yet again that I had not read the story recently even then), and for all I didn't remember about the original work, it really didn't matter because the film was constantly engaging, frightening, and thrilling by turns. That is really what you want from such a film, whether it is adapted from a popular novella or not, and I got that result. Does it look like I will get it from The Mist series? Too soon to tell. I would rather get a couple of episodes into the series, and then maybe we should have a discussion about where we think it will take us from that point. 

Until then, It... Castle Rock... The Mist... even The Dark Tower adaptation... I am eagerly awaiting them all equally, but they will each have to do some heavy lifting to win me over ultimately.

Aaron: I think we're in general agreement about this: intrigued but withholding judgment until we actually get to see the show. I will reiterate that I'm less excited for this than I am the other upcoming projects. Castle Rock is exciting for its mystery and J.J. Abrams pedigree; the show at this point could be anything, and it comes from someone with a proven track record in this arena. It is exciting because, not to jump ahead too far, the source novel is one of my all-time favorites. The Dark Tower is interesting because it seemed like such an impossibility for so long that I'm curious to see how they'll tackle the sprawling series of novels (and, if you have read the books and have read any news about the movies, some really exciting and intriguing changes have already been teased). The Dark Tower series eventually ties in to almost everything Stephen King has written, and one of the aspects I'm wondering about is how they'll handle that. With the various novels of Stephen King licensed to various competing studios, will The Dark Tower films be allowed to cross over into the world of The Stand (which is pretty integral to the plot for awhile)? The Mist, on the other hand, just doesn't inspire the same curiosity. Perhaps it's Stephen King overload in 2017 (perish the thought!), perhaps it's the fact that some of the changes in the trailer (the implication that the mist itself is sentient) don't fill me with wonder, or perhaps it's just that the movie is so recent and was itself such a solid adaptation. 

But let's not kid ourselves here, I will no doubt be watching this once the series premieres on Spike on June 22nd. Or, to be honest, once it makes its way to Hulu or some other streaming service.

"Carrie" On, My Wayward Sons...

Aaron here, with a quick announcement.

You may have noticed a distinct lack of activity here recently. After a pretty promising start, our plans for regular activity on this blog hit a few snags. To paraphrase a certain blockbuster, life finds a way to ruin all your wonderful plans. This time, however, the plans were disrupted for entirely joyful reasons. Rik has been busy on a string of exciting projects both personal and professional, and I, for my part, have been busy doting over a lovely newborn daughter. I can't speak entirely for Rik, but life these days has been pretty good. Just not entirely conducive to unpaid blogging.

Recently our schedules have begun to stabilize enough that we've been able to discuss the future of this site, along with our other venture, Visiting and Revisiting. In the case of We Who Watch, we've decided to celebrate our favorite time of the year, Halloween, by tackling one of Stephen King's novels in a special, super-sized series of posts (as if our regular posts hadn't been long enough). So far in this project we've been going through the short stories in Stephen King's first collection, Night Shift, and we've decided to spend October discussing his first published novel, Carrie, and the four subsequent films.

Yes, you read that correctly, FOUR films. There's the classic 1976 film directed by Brian De Palma, a little remembered 1999 sequel (The Rage: Carrie 2), an even less remembered 2002 made-for-TV remake starring Angela Bettis, and the more high profile theatrical remake released in 2013 that starred Chloë Grace Moretz.

We're making this announcement ahead of time in order to give anyone who wants to play along a chance. The novel is pretty short, and can be finished in one or two dedicated sittings. However, a couple of the movies may require a bit of searching. Carrie (1976) is currently streaming on Amazon Prime, and will be available to stream on Hulu as of October 1st. The DVD can also be obtained through Netflix's disc-by-mail service. The 2013 remake is available for rent through iTunes, or Netflix's disc-by-mail service as well. The tricky ones will be the 1999 sequel, which is available for streaming only through an Amazon Prime Starz subscription, and the 2002 remake, which is unavailable for (legal) streaming anywhere. Both discs are unavailable through Netflix. There is, however, a reasonably priced set that includes both of those films, as well as the original 1976 version, on either DVD or Blu-ray. Homework in this case is optional, of course, but I for one am looking forward to finally checking out these two almost-forgotten adaptations.

If you want to play along at home, hopefully this announcement gives you enough time to prepare. Keep your eyes peeled, because we'll be back in October with a string of posts centering around Stephen King's Carrie.