Tag Archives: Stephen King

The 2002 ‘Carrie’ Adaptation Brought Fresh Blood To the Small Screen

In his 2002 Carrie adaptation, David Carson’s film opens with the titular Carrie White’s birth as asteroids rain down around her house. But when this made-for-TV movie aired to bombs of terrible critics reviews, it effectively blew out the studio’s plan for a spin-off show that could have taken the well-known story into fresh territory. Among the many accusations of not bringing anything new to the table alongside Brian De Palma’s bloodsoaked version from 1979, it was also accused of being boring. The San Francisco Chronicle wrote, “In the time it takes you to watch the remake, you could drive to the nearest video/DVD outlet, watch the original Carrie at home and return it — and still have an hour to spare.” 

Not only are these reviews as mean as Carrie’s tampon-throwing tormentors, they don’t appear to have watched the same film I did. Nor did they identify the found-footage link to King’s source material left out of both De Palma’s and Kimberley Pierce’s versions. 

Alongside the meteoric birth of Carrie White at the start of 2002’s Carrie, we have Detective Mulchaey (David Keith) as he films interviews with the handful of prom night survivors and those potentially involved in the fiasco that killed 234 people, leveling the gymnasium in fire, electricity, and blood. And as the adaptation flits back and forth between two weeks after the tragedy and the days in its lead-up, director Carson often opts for a handheld camera style that adds to the found-footage aspects of the narrative. 

As an intellectual property so known by De Palma’s version, it’s easy to forget that Stephen King’s novel is partly found footage: the story is interspersed with police documents, newspaper clippings, hospital records, and more evidence about Carrie, her mother Margaret, and the town itself both before and after Carrie’s telekinetic rampage. This aspect immediately sets the 2002 version of the film apart from the others and adds a particular raw charm to the sometimes-forced performances that almost feel like a documentary rather than a movie. 

For fans of the book, these style choices are effective and creepy. Angela Bettis’ sweaty, greasy and stringy-haired, baggy-eyed Carrie is very much as King describes on the page. The main difference is that Bettis is extremely skinny whereas King’s Carrie is chubby — another reason Chris Hargensen and Billy elect to douse her in pig blood. Importantly though, in the 2002 Carrie, Bettis’s version of the character remains plain even when dressed up for prom. This is a marked contrast to Sissy Spacek‘s version, who has the Hollywood ugly-girl transformation; Bryan Fuller’s screenplay even calls this out in his Carrie remake by referencing She’s All That, the Freddie Prinze Jr. vehicle where a model posing as an ugly girl merely hides behind a pair of glasses.

Also unlike De Palma’s meek Carrie, Angela Bettis’ version has a current of rage simmering under the surface right from the beginning. We see it like a slap when Bettis’ Carrie finds her locker defaced with “PLUG IT UP” and an avalanche of tampons fall out in the main hallway. In this version, Carrie’s period shaming isn’t hidden in the girl’s locker room – it’s public. Bettis’ Carrie hits the mean girls with such a look of violent hatred that they are taken aback in fear. We see Sue Snell (Kandyse McClure) realize in real-time just what an awful thing they’ve done. It’s a shock when Spacek’s Carrie goes nuclear. But Bettis’ performance makes this Carrie a revenge story from the jump. Fuller’s screenplay also features a flashback demonstrating how Carrie’s power has been in play since she was a little girl, not a result of getting her period at 16 the way both King and De Palma’s versions tell it. 

Another key difference between Carson’s Carrie and the rest is Patricia Clarkson’s stupendous portrayal of Carrie’s mother, Margaret White. There are several types of abusers, but they tend to break down into two major groups: those who scream, yell, and physically act out, and those who quietly bake in their violence, filling a room with toxicity and erupting when you least expect it. Clarkson plays Mrs. White as the second type with chilling perfection. Gone are the histrionics and banshee wailing of Piper Laurie. Instead, Clarkson’s Mrs. White presents the venomous resignation of a woman who has lost her mind from trauma and takes her pain out on her equally disturbed daughter. Anyone who has experienced a quiet abuser might even be triggered by Clarkson’s portrayal in this film. 

(The chemistry in this 2002 Carrie between Carrie and Margaret reminds me of Pearl and her mother in Ti West’s Pearl. Emotionally charged and painful. Beautifully grotesque performances. There’s a level of realism here that alone deserves giving this film another shot.) 

And making Sue Snell one of the only Black students at Carrie’s high school — the only one of Carrie’s bullies to truly atone for her role in the torment — is an important casting choice that serves to highlight the multiple levels of white devilry at play here. This includes the bully classmates like Chris Hargesen (Emilie de Ravin), Carrie’s ultra-religious mother, and Carrie’s own ultimate rampage with its astronomical body count. Each of these white characters escapes accountability for their misdeeds even as their violence is well known. The principal of the school has a folder featuring 70+ acts of Chris’ violence against classmates. Carrie’s own neighbors witnessed her mother abusing her and did nothing. And by the end, we are rooting for Carrie even though she’s killed hundreds of innocent people, epitomizing the white antihero in a way other versions of this story didn’t extend. 

Arguably, the most important change from De Palma and King’s versions is the alternate ending in which Carrie survives and rides off into the night with Sue, who plans to take her as far as Florida so she can begin again. While there have long been queer readings of the film, Fuller’s 2002 Carrie brings these queer undertones to the top through carefully placed jokes in the movie. It begins with Sue and Helen (Chelan Simmons) talking about rumors that Sue and Carrie are having a lesbian affair and that’s why she’s having Tommy take her to the prom. Sue jokingly responds, “It’s just that Carrie satisfies me in a way no one else can.” And then later, Carrie makes her only joke in the film to Helen after Tommy’s bestie compliments his tux: “If they decide to run away together, I’ll dance with you.” Adding to the queer-charged alternate ending is Sue finding Carrie drowned by her mother in the bathtub, and giving her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation: a kiss that brings Carrie back to life. This open queer coding by itself sets apart Carson’s Carrie in a most welcome divergence.

Carson’s Carrie might have some pacing issues that cause the production to lag in places — the epic 150-minute runtime without commercials doesn’t help. But when you keep in mind this version was supposed to become a television series, it makes sense why certain unexpected characters get a lot of air time — they would have been key characters had the show been picked up. Which I wish it had been. Will Carrie heal, or will her rampages continue? Or something of both? Revisiting the 2002 Carrie remake now that it’s available on streaming platforms like Tubi and MGM+ shows how it both honors and extends King and De Palma’s visions of Carrie White in important ways that feel both timely, and timeless.

Two Titans at a Carnival: ‘Quicksilver Highway’ Takes Viewers on a Curious Journey

Stephen King and Clive Barker conquered the horror genre independently, but one 1997 omnibus film sought to combine their visions. Quicksilver Highway is a made-for-TV double-feature that highlights two lesser-known stories by the literary titans. In an era when many horror fans got their fix via Tales From The Crypt, this anthology had an opportunity to use its format to compare King and Barker’s styles. However, whether or not it succeeded in this aim is debatable. 

Quicksilver Highway isn’t a scary movie in the traditional sense. There are no jump scares, boogeymen, or deep psychological terrors. Instead, the film is a campy horror-comedy that made body horror more accessible to television audiences. Like many anthologies, the film uses a framing device to connect the two stories. That framing device is Aaron Quicksilver (Christopher Llyod), a traveling carnival worker who looks like a poster child for the 90s goth aesthetic. The mysterious performer tells the stories as cautionary tales to people he encounters in his travels. 

The first short film adapts Stephen King’s Chattery Teeth. King published this story in 1992, and Quicksilver Highway is its only film adaptation. The framing device sets up the story by introducing Aaron Quicksilver to a young bride on the highway. When they meet, the bride is waiting for her husband to return to their broken-down car. While the bride’s husband searches for repair help, Quicksilver relays the story of traveling salesperson Bill Hogan (Raphael Sbarge). 

At a roadside store in the middle of nowhere, Hogan spots a set of wind-up chattering teeth. Although the teeth are inoperable, Hogan finds them strangely charming. The shopkeep gives him the teeth, and Hogan drives into an impending dust storm with his new treasure. 

Fatefully, Hogan also picks up a hitchhiker. 

Things seem copacetic at first, but the hitchhiker is a vicious killer who fights Hogan for control of his van. After a near-fatal crash, Hogan ends up trapped in his seatbelt while his murderous passenger plots his death. However, the chattering teeth miraculously come to life and save Hogan just in time. This bizarre children’s toy is evil in its own way, but the film demonstrates that enemies are sometimes friends in disguise. 

The anthology uses a subtle trick to tie its framing device into this cautionary tale, and audiences might miss it if they aren’t watching closely. The same actor plays Bill Hogan and the bride’s husband, Kerry. When Quicksilver finishes telling the story, Kerry’s abandoned bride discovers he’s been the victim of a car accident. Then, in a weird but funny moment, audiences see the teeth dragging Kerry’s lifeless body off the highway. Given the teeth’s apparent ability to sense evil, it appears the bride wasn’t bound for marital bliss after all. 

The second short film adapts Clive Barker’s The Body Politic. While Chattery Teeth highlights an unexpected hero, this story turns something innocuous into something horrific. Clive Barker’s best-known works typically focus on fantastical creatures symbolizing specific characteristics of humanity. However, The Body Politic takes his penchant for disturbia to a new level. Instead of otherworldly beasts, the inhabitants of this tale are beset by their own hands — literally. But first, the film takes Aaron Quicksilver to the setting he knows best: a carnival tent. When a pickpocket wanders into his tent, Quicksilver takes the opportunity to tell him this tale. 

The story begins with Dr. Charles George (Matt Frewer), a plastic surgeon whose hands fail him during a procedure. Although the surgery doesn’t go as planned, fans may notice a brief but memorable cameo from Clive Barker himself. Barker plays an anesthesiologist who narrowly misses a flying scalpel thrown by Dr. George’s rogue hands. Afterwards, Barker’s character removes his mask, grins at the camera, and says: “What have I ever done to you?” 

Dr. George assumes this mishap is a one-time issue, but things quickly spiral out of control as his hands take on lives of their own. Whereas King’s chattering teeth are a voiceless entity, the doctor’s hands have distinct personalities. While Dr. George sleeps, “Left” and “Right” plot their escape from his body in a series of hilarious conversations. Right emerges as the leader, while Left willingly follows his plan. Unfortunately (but comically), the hands first kill Dr. George’s wife. In the end, Right severs Left from the body and entrusts him with gathering followers.

As the movie descends into chaos, Left follows Dr. George to the hospital and rallies other hands to rebel against their hosts. If Thing from The Addams Family built an army, it would look like Left’s ragtag troop of hands. However, Dr. George has one thing the hands do not: a brain. He tricks all the hands into jumping off the roof, thus ending the revolution. Once again, the film uses one actor to connect the story to its framing device. In this case, Dr. George and the pickpocket from Quicksilver’s tent are the same person. After the story, the pickpocket’s hands get him into trouble by leading him out of the tent and right into police custody. 

Without question, the biggest highlight of this film is Christopher Llyod. From the dog collar to the high-heeled combat boots, the Back To The Future actor looks like he stumbled out of a Hot Topic on his way to the film set. His talent for lighthearted comedy makes Aaron Quicksilver more whimsical than scary, but this works with the horror-comedy theme. 

As for the stories, Quicksilver Highway is loyal to the Stephen King source material. Chattery Teeth plays almost the same as the short story, right down to the dialogue. For example, the banter between the store owner and his wife perfectly mimics King’s written words. Furthermore, the film lifts the hitchhiker’s annoying insistence on calling Hogan “dude” right off the page. The anthology omits some of the more gruesome moments, but that’s typical of a network television movie. 

In the case of The Body Politic, the anthology’s need for speed loses Clive Barker’s message. The story’s Dr. George is actually a manual laborer who spent months dealing with the revolution of his hands. Cutting the story down to fit the film’s runtime removes some compelling instances of internal struggle and puts the focus solely on the rebellious hands. The dialogue between Left and Right is nearly identical between the two works, but their escape is far more satisfyingly macabre in Barker’s short story. The change in pacing and tame depictions of violence makes the Quicksilver Highway version of this story feel much zanier than Barker’s original. 

Of course, the biggest question for any anthology is: do these stories function well together? In this format, yes. Both Chattery Teeth and The Body Politic rely on giving sentience to unlikely objects and have an almost fable-like quality. The pacing in both short films is similar, although The Body Politic speeds up more as the story moves along. Both films also rely on comedic elements to lighten the mood, and both share a loose connection through their focus on detached body parts. Although, the anthology’s framing device would have been even more effective if he told both stories from within his carnival tent.  

Nevertheless, Quicksilver Highway only works at the expense of Barker’s original story. In many ways, The Body Politic had to bend and stretch to fit the Chattery Teeth mold. Sure, the concept at the heart of The Body Politic lends itself to absurdist interpretation, and this section is enjoyable to watch. However, an anthology can and should have room to capture the unique tones of all of its parts. Instead, Barker’s story takes on a very different style for the sake of continuity. His fiction has a history of poor representation in films, and this anthology is yet another questionable interpretation.

On the whole, Quicksilver Highway feels more like an homage to Stephen King’s style, with some Clive Barker thrown in for novelty. Director Mick Garris is an undisputed expert in short-form King adaptations, so this should not surprise viewers. Garris also directed 1992’s Sleepwalkers, which features an original script by Stephen King and cameos from both authors. Therefore, Quicksilver Highway primarily serves as a reunion for the three filmmakers. It’s not the right horror film for audiences craving a good scare, but it provides an intriguing (albeit small) window into two of the greatest minds in horror. 

‘1922’ Reveals the Darkest Side of Stephen King

It may come as a surprise to those who only know the man’s work through reputation and shared cultural shorthand, but Stephen King is actually something of a soft-touch—at least when it comes to his lengthy novels. For all the murders, monsters, and mayhem essayed by King’s pen, his work is more often about the persistence of hope in the face of evil than it is about triumphant evil. While victory over the forces of darkness is always hard won and often impermanent, rare is the Stephen King novel or novella that ends in abject darkness and ruin.

Many of the most notoriously unsettling endings affiliated with King’s work are in fact the product of adaptations rather than the actual text. The Shining’s frozen labyrinth, Carrie’s final nightmare, the legendary punchline to The Mistthese are the inventions of their respective films. Brilliantly nasty and brutalist punctuation marks added to stories that King preferred to end on an ellipsis.

King famously does not outline or plan out his stories in advance, preferring to discover them as he writes them. As such, his own affection for his characters often leads to seemingly-doomed individuals finding ways to stave off authorial-mandated mortality. Misery was meant to end with its hero, author Paul Sheldon, not only killed by the infamous Annie Wilkes, but his entrails fed to Annie’s pet pigs while his skin was fashioned into binding for a special edition of his own novel. Yet the more King wrote, the more Paul Sheldon kept himself alive and the longer Misery grew. The book ends with Paul managing to survive his ordeal. Maimed? Yes. Traumatized? Oh good lord, yes. But he does survive.

Although, just because King usually doesn’t take his readers to places of ultimate darkness doesn’t mean he can’t or won’t. The examples of this are legendary within circles of horror fans and Uncle Stevie’s own constant readers.

There’s Pet Sematary, a novel so bleak and unsparing that King himself declined to publish it for years after its completion.

There’s Revival, a tale so stunning in its nihilism that it can only be discussed in hushed tones.

And then there’s 1922.

Originally published in the collection Full Dark, No Stars, the novella was faithfully adapted into a deeply unsettling film by director Zak Hilditch and released with little fanfare on Netflix in 2017 in the midst of a run of much higher-profile King adaptations. 

At the point when we meet protagonist Wilfred ‘Wilf’ James (Thomas Jane), he has abandoned even trying to pretend like he might escape his fate. Wilf seeks only to live long enough to finish writing out a confession to his multitude of crimes.

One crime in particular stands paramount above all others. In 1922—when he was still just a mostly honest, oft-broke farmer—Wilf got into a dispute with his wife, Arlette (Molly Parker), over a parcel of land that she owned and wished to sell (even if selling meant the blighting of Wilf’s own farmland). Wilf, in turn, convinced their teenaged son Henry (Dylan Schmid) to help him murder Arlette and dispose of the body.

While the murder is a success—that sounds very wrong to write out, but you get what I mean—it nonetheless sets off a chain of disasters that in turn result in the destruction of everything Wilf loves. Henry is driven to embark on a short-lived crime spree that culminates in not only his own death but that of his pregnant girlfriend.

Ordinarily, the nasty kick of this sort of downward spiral narrative lies within the sense of escalation. How bad are things going to get? Is there any way for our main characters to worm their way out from under the hammerblow coming down on them? Do we, the audience, even want them to escape?

As a recent example, look to Guillermo del Toro’s excellent adaptation of Nightmare Alley. That film, like its source novel, takes us through the laborious process of the self-immolation of Bradley Cooper’s character’s mind, body, and soul. Maximum tension and jet-black humor is wrung from watching a terrible person dig themselves deeper and deeper into a Hell they increasingly deserve.

This principle goes doubly for more straightforward horror. To paraphrase one of the more infamous taglines associated with the genre, we sit down to watch a horror film in order to find out who will survive, and what will be left of them. If we have those details provided to us before the first reel even gets underway (metaphorically speaking, this is a Netflix movie after all), then what tension is there to exploit?

Yet 1922 does just that. We know these men are doomed from the moment the film begins, and this knowledge casts an even more frigid pall over the proceedings than even the film’s icy cinematography. Rather than a noir-ish exercise in heightening suspense and delicious just-desserts, 1922 is a tightening noose you begin to feel around your neck. It’s the proverbial slow motion train wreck—too horrifying and too captivating for you to ever dare look away.

It would be easy for either or both story and film to be a stultifying slog through relentless misery. But just as King’s commanding authorial voice keeps the pages turning, the gorgeous, oppressive mood of the film—paired with Jane’s arresting and eccentric performance—keeps the viewer riveted to their seat for the duration.

Late in the film, a ghastly, undead vision of Arlette appears to Wilf and whispers to him, “things that only a dead woman could know,” specifically the violent, lonely death their son will soon meet. The information itself is not the torture. The torture is Wilf’s absolute powerlessness to prevent this awful future from occurring even with all his foreknowledge.

1922 capitalizes on inevitability for its own delectable form of torture. It’s not just the violence, and the heartbreak, and the horror that affects the viewer so deeply. It’s seeing the violence, and the heartbreak, and the horror take shape before your eyes, knowing that there is no way to halt any of the damned course. This is a crueler sort of horror than viewers are accustomed to, and perhaps it is that cruelty that makes 1922 a prickly film that is difficult to categorize or recommend to a casual viewer looking for a macabre bit of fun. 1922 remains unique even within the ever-expanding canon of Stephen King adaptations, a beguiling black diamond that dares confront the face of absolute hopelessness and offers no sanctuary or reprieve. Doomed is doomed, whether we deserve it or not.

Pick Up the Phone, ‘Cell’s Calling

Technological horror is a constantly evolving subgenre; because of its relationship to science and innovation, it has to be. Our fears aren’t fixed points, and as technology advances, events like Y2K or the ill-defined “dark web” lose their power. The reverse can also be true. As we wade further into a world where “phones” mean the thing in our pocket and not the thing on our wall, our anxieties around them evolve. Something that was once an eye-rolling condemnation of a harmless device can start to look prescient. Such is the case with 2016’s Cell, a film that unwittingly captures our very modern phone-related dread.

Adapted from Stephen King’s 2006 novel of the same name — and co-written by King himself — Cell is an apocalyptic, zombie-adjacent, tech nightmare. Its potpourri quality makes it a challenge to both connect with and categorize. But if you strip away comparisons to the source material and drill into the technological paranoia, Cell reveals itself as a stellar example of cell phone horror.

The film opens on Clay Riddell (John Cusack) as he traverses a crowded Boston airport. Everyone around him is on their phone. This is clearly the setup for a big bang of an opening; there’s a vague sense that the tableau could degrade into a finger-waving indictment of our inability to connect with people right in front of us. Except it doesn’t evoke those feelings. The phones look commonplace, the scene familiar and relatable, and that only serves to make the coming melee more jarring.

Without warning, a signal pours from the cell phones and everyone using one is instantly turned into a mindlessly violent monster. Zombie-like, the newly-turned people foam at the mouth as they chase down victims. Riddell is only saved because his battery died — by happenstance as opposed to a pious rejection of the tech that would become the world’s downfall. This is another point where the film could level its judgment at characters and viewers alike, yet doesn’t.

Cell plays a lot like The Stand, with elements of countless other King works woven into the narrative. On his trek to find his son, Riddell meets other survivors, most notably Tom McCourt (played by Samuel L. Jackson), but also Isabelle Fuhrman (Orphan), Stacy Keach, and Owen Teague (It, The Stand). The threat escalates as the signal — or “pulse” — becomes transmittable through the mouths of the already infected. There are also shared dreams of a man in a red hoodie, a man Riddell had been drawing long before the pulse. 

As I rush through these plot points, I can recognize where this film is ineffective. Too much time is spent in the wrong places, and at 90 minutes, it somehow feels both drawn-out and rushed. Common in-world parlance like “phoner” and “pulse” show up with seemingly no natural development. The man in the hoodie is introduced inefficiently, and there is virtually no exploration of the apparent hive mind present in both the afflicted and yet-to-be. This could be blamed on — or explained away by — the existence of a much more dense source material. But these things only keep this movie from achieving sublime greatness. 

But even with its issues, Cell still manages to brush against something wonderful. The true terror, and the most relevant of the film’s themes, are the phones and our wide-eyed reliance on them. Cell presents a world in which mobile phones act as gateways, allowing dangerous things to slip in as we recklessly open up. Despite its late 2010’s release, the film depicts phones as simple devices for making convenient phone calls. The limited scope of the technology looks quaint and innocuous given how truly entangled with our devices we’ve become. 

It goes without saying that modern phone use is actually much different, with many of us renouncing the call-making features all together. But they’re still a major part of modern life, their glowing windows allowing insidious attacks from darkened corners of the internet. If you view the titular “cell” as a modern smartphone, the paranoia, fear, and violence becomes relevant again. In a way, Cell is accidentally about the dangers of social media, something that’s become intrinsically tied to phone use.

But instead of updating its tech, Cell plays out like a period piece. The mobile devices in use aren’t reflective of its 2016 release date, the same year that saw the debut of the iPhone 7. Still, the idea of people being whipped into a frenzy and infecting those around them feels like an on-the-nose indictment of Facebook and other online platforms used for various kinds of indoctrination. The fact that it doesn’t appear intentional is fascinating.

Cell’s main protagonists are middle-aged men. While that’s not at all uncommon in King’s works, the disaster genre, or tech horror in general, it is an oddity in phone/social media horror. Friend Request, released the same year, is explicitly about the terror of social media; its protagonists are young women. Countdown, #Horror, and Cam are all cautionary tales about the dangers of being online, and they all focus on young women. Even analog phone horror like When a Stranger Calls, and The Caller present “being on the phone” as something inherently feminine. Having men at the center of a story like Cell manages to be unique and subversive in a subgenre that seems intent on making phone use, and everything that goes along with it, something “for girls.”

There’s a sense of nihilism at work in Cell that feels particularly poignant when paired with a social media allegory. A pervasive sensation of hopelessness runs through the film, a feeling that nothing matters — that the path is already decided. Riddell is essentially positioned as a savior, the one who can see the truth and thus defeat evil, which is represented literally as the man in the red hoodie. (It’s interesting to note that Red Hoodie, or the “Raggedy Man,” looks like a twenty-something kid, an archetype we often see employed as the evil behind a screen, stealing our data and hacking T-Mobile.) Except, Red Hoodie is multiple steps ahead of Riddell, and it’s quickly clear his pilgrimage to save his son was pointless. He too becomes infected, and he joins the pulsating swarm of humans, now reduced to nothing more than transmitters. A faceless mass of energy. A horde.

It’s an unflinchingly bleak ending made only more grim by the quick glimpse we get into Riddell’s mind. In it we see that even as he runs with the pack of blank-faced infected, Riddell imagines himself with his son, traveling to catch up with McCourt and the remaining survivors of his group. He may be lost to the waking world, but his internal life reflects the most fulfilling outcome. Because of this, we’re left with an ending that, while absolutely somber and upsetting, is also comforting. Despite the tragedy that’s claimed his family, Riddell can still be with them in the ether.  

A wonderful thing about stories is that they live outside of time. And while Cell will never be a film about social media’s insidious underbelly, it absolutely is. Like the pulse, the internet — and all its trappings — are an unmatched force with untold power over us. And while Riddell inevitably fails in his quest to save his son and the world, maybe in a true I Am Legend twist, he wasn’t meant to. Perhaps the pulse is just the next stage in our relationship with technology.

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The Enduring Power of Beverly Marsh in ‘It’

In a genre typically considered “for the guys,” it’s time to give a nod to the ladies. Uterus Horror is a subgenre of horror films that focuses on the uniquely female experience of puberty and the act of coming into their sexuality, using horror elements to emphasize and/or act as a metaphor for that experience. These films are often ignored in theaters, but quickly develop cult followings. Columnist Molly Henery, who named and defined the subgenre, tackles a new film each month and analyzes how it fits into this bloody new corner of horror.

In the final Uterus Horror article of 2020, I discussed how lycanthropy is the perfect metaphor for young womanhood in When Animals Dream. Now it’s 2021, and I want to start the year off with something special. It’s time to talk about IT. And yes, I mean EVERY version of IT.

Most horror fans are likely very familiar with IT, Stephen King’s best-selling novel first published in 1986. From there, it was given a two-part TV miniseries in 1990, directed by Tommy Lee Wallace (Halloween III: Season of the Witch) who also wrote the teleplay with Lawrence D. Cohen (Carrie). Most recently, director Andy Muschietti (Mama) brought fans two films, IT and IT Chapter Two. The first film was written by Chase Palmer, Cary Fukunaga (Beasts of No Nation), and Gary Dauberman (Annabelle Comes Home), with Dauberman returning to write the second film.  

While there are variations between each version of IT, they all have the same basic story. A group of misfit kids, six boys and one girl, who call themselves the “Losers Club,” come together one summer when they realize they are all being hunted by the same evil clown. As outcasts in the small town of Derry, Maine, the group learns to lean heavily on each other. When they realize the nightmarish creatures they’ve seen are all the work of the sinister Pennywise, they risk their lives to defeat him. 

The kids believe they successfully banish the clown, but have to return to Derry as adults when Pennywise begins killing youths again 27 years later. Every version of IT tells a fantastic horror story about monsters and growing up. It is generally considered a classic coming-of-age story along with films like Stand By Me and The Goonies. Both versions – miniseries and movie – use life-changing experiences as a metaphor for the male protagonists’ journey through adolescence.

But It does not belong to the boys alone. As a collection of films, the Uterus Horror canon is meant to level the cultural playing field for non-male horror fans just as it brings attention to horror stories that highlight experiences unique to young women. While IT consists primarily of boys becoming men, there is one character who gives some feminine insight: Beverly Marsh. This superb character has been played by some great actors including Emily Perkins (Ginger Snaps), Annette O’Toole (Smallville), Sophia Lillis (Gretel & Hansel), and Jessica Chastain (Crimson Peak). 

In each adaptation, Pennywise attacks his victims by manifesting the thing they fear the most. For the boys in the Losers Club, that fear includes werewolves, mummies, lepers, evil paintings, and even giant birds. When we finally see Bev’s fear, it is something a bit simpler and much more rational than any of the boys. The thing she fears most manifests as blood.

The first time Pennywise comes to Bev, an explosion of blood covers her entire bathroom. Despite her screams, her father is unable to see it, leaving Bev (and the Losers Club, depending on the version of the story) to clean it all up. And so the blood becomes a representation of the fear of her impending womanhood. 

To put it bluntly, the blood Bev sees is period blood. She is afraid of going through puberty and becoming a woman. She fears this because of her abusive, misogynistic father and the fact that boys and men already sexualize her. Her father constantly asks Bev, “Are you still my little girl?” There is an implication of sexual abuse, more evident in some versions of IT than others. His disturbing question and treatment of Bev also indicates that once she does become a woman, she will no longer be safe around him. 

“Safe” is a relative term considering the way he already treats young Bev, but that makes the other possible abuses she could be subjected to even more terrifying. Boys in school sexualize her. Rumors spread, with the IT miniseries going so far as to imply sexual abuse from the bully Henry Bowers and his gang. She is taught very early in life that being a woman is a frightening thing.

When Pennywise comes to Bev as an adult, there are differences depending on which IT you are consuming. Bev goes to visit her childhood home, quickly learning from its elderly resident that her father had passed away years earlier. It’s revealed this is Pennywise himself, disguised as an old woman and, in the miniseries, Bev’s father. Based on her fear of the blood, it makes sense that adult Bev would now be afraid of the decaying old woman.

This is an extension of her fear of aging, evolved into a fear of becoming old and withered. Seeing her father shows that, even though she left home at a young age, the impact of her father’s abuse has lasted her entire life. Since he made her afraid to grow out of being his “little girl,” it’s understandable she would still fear him as well. 

Of all the members of the Losers Club, Bev has the most rational fear. While the boys fear monsters and imaginary things, Bev is afraid of her own biology. Despite it being inevitable, she is terrified of growing up. Much like Carrie, IT is another prime example of Stephen King bringing an uncommon degree of insight to the concept of Uterus Horror. The practicality of Bev’s dread also makes her stand out from her friends. There is a group of boys experiencing their own individual coming of age stories, but Bev’s battle with Uterus Horror becomes the most memorable of the group.

From the ‘80s to today, fans are continually drawn to Beverly Marsh. We needed her story then, and we need more stories like hers for young women who want to see themselves in the horror genre. 

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Brian De Palma’s ‘Carrie’ Celebrates Our Teenage Monsters

The book came first. 

At some point in my teenage years, outgrowing Mary Higgins Clark and Christopher Pike paperbacks, I picked up a copy of Stephen King’s Carrie. My interest in horror was slowly budding, as I emerged from the cocoon of my parents’ overprotectiveness, first with viewings of It, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show at sleepovers, Blockbuster rentals of The Craft, and finally sealed with rowdy screenings of Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer at the local multiplex. Teenage girls like me were always represented in horror; scream queens and final girls ruled the genre. But there was something about Carrie that seemed even more intriguing and terrifying: the prom queen as a monster.

When I was younger, around 12 or 13, I’d found a book in my parents’ bedroom called Teenage Girls: A Parent’s Survival Manual that I found hilarious and offensive. On the cover was a photograph of a young girl, backlit in red light, her face in darkness, staring down the camera. In my memory, she has glowing red eyes, though that idea seems ridiculous now (she in fact, does not). I was simultaneously amused and horrified that my parents were reading a book that positioned teenage girls as seeming this evil and scary, something to be “survived.” Were we monsters? But more importantly, could we be monsters, the ones everyone else is afraid of? 

This idea was a fixation into my early 20s: my undergraduate thesis project was a short slasher about a cheerleading squad, a sort of Bring it On meets Halloween, in which the killer is a disgruntled squad member, titled, as a play on the concept, “The Final Girl.” It was messy and imperfect both on purpose and by accident, but there was something that I had to get out, some expression of powerful feminine violence in a highly gender-codified, hierarchical environment that had been brewing, bubbling with every viewing of the Scream movies, Slumber Party Massacre, Sorority House Massacre, Dario Argento’s Suspiria, and of course, the patient zero, Carrie.  

In high school, once I had read Carrie, I had to see the movie. I watched it with my best friend Kristen at, of course, a sleepover, and the split-screen moments in the prom scene were my first real “cinema!” moments, when the combination of image, sound, and rhythm grabs you with visceral, recognizable power. Prior to this, what I loved about movies like Scream and Clueless was the writing; I was somewhat unconscious to the ways they moved and looked and felt. But Brian De Palma will never let the audience forget for a second that the most important way a movie speaks is through the image, and its construction in time and space. 

I became obsessed with Carrie. Obsessed with the line readings, especially anything that came out of Piper Laurie’s mouth – and especially the line, “I can see your dirty pillows” (my friend Gena embroidered a pillow with the phrase for one of my late 20s birthdays). I was obsessed with the ‘70s gym shorts and high socks, and P.J. Soles’ hat and the way Miss Collins wallops Chris across the face. Obsessed with the hazy cinematography and editing, the split screen and split diopter shots, the camera whirling around and around Tommy and Carrie as they dance at the prom. The extreme closeups of Nancy Allen’s mouth with her crowded front teeth as she licks her lips, tugging on the rope attached to the bucket of blood; the long, long, long slow-motion shot as Sue discovers the rope. I was obsessed with the way Carrie, covered in blood, whipped around in a crouch, her hands locked in stiff claws, and the camera rapidly jump-cutting in on her pupil as she sends the car flipping over and over itself. I was obsessed with recognizing a visual parallel in Margaret White’s crucifixion and the creepy Jesus figurine. 

My senior year of high school, I decided to go as Carrie for Halloween. I found a cheap pink satin gown at a thrift shop and wore it all day at school, carrying a bouquet, wearing a tiara. That night, at a Halloween party, I made everyone gather in the driveway for my ceremonial blood drenching. I handed my friend Joanna a sauce jar filled with corn syrup and red food coloring as I had heard the Carrie blood was made of, and instructed her to pour it over my head. All I remember is that the drenching felt neverending. Not a shocking splash but a steady stream as she slowly poured it over me. I changed into gym shorts and a t-shirt, but the red corn syrup remained on my skin. My friend Andrew, who I’d known my whole life, licked my arm and was surprised it was sweet. A week later, he died in a drunk driving accident. That night was the last time I saw him. 

If this all seems extra personal, it feels important to talk about why I connected with Carrie so much as a teenager, and its influence. What King and Brian De Palma understand and convey so beautifully is that high school is hard. It’s filled with blood, and sex, and death, all while fumbling through the figuring out of yourself and others, and yourself in opposition to others, including your parents. Plus, everyone hates gym class. All of that is amplified in King’s book, written just a few years out of high school himself, and working as a teacher. It’s a story about a bullied, abused girl with supernatural powers that’s grounded in a recognizable and terrifying reality, because King knows how terrifying high school can be. De Palma, on screen, makes it erotic, operatic, funny, scary, and tragic, every emotion deeply felt and deeply real. The movie is camp, but sincere. 

I’ve seen Carrie dozens of times on VHS and DVD, my copy traveling with me during the ten or so times I’ve moved around the country since college, but the first time I saw it on the big screen was last year, at the American Cinematheque, in a screening series of Argento/DePalma double features put on by Cinematic Void. Even though I knew I would love it, it had been several years since I’d watched it in earnest. I was hoping I wouldn’t see something that I’d recognize now as problematic or exploitative.

This time around, nearly 20 years removed from being a teenage girl, I  found it profoundly moving. Margaret White isn’t just a crazy, homicidal religious nut, she’s a deeply traumatized woman who has turned to fanaticism as a coping mechanism to deal with her repressed sexual trauma. Chris is trapped in a psychosexual abusive relationship with Billy and lashing out at those around her. Miss Collins is an imperfect ally because she doesn’t trust anyone, and Carrie, well Carrie shows what happens when pathological shame, abuse, and psychological torture combust, but in small moments, she owns her own power, her own sexuality. “It’s me, mama,” she pleads with her mother, who declares her remarkable gift the work of Satan. Even the infamous line I giggled at in high school took on a new tenor. “Breasts, mama,” she says, “they’re called breasts, every woman has them,” gently asserting her right to her own sexuality. The locker room slo-mo shot isn’t just a brazen display of the male gaze, it’s a comment on the male gaze, a sly bait-and-switch from sensual to savage. 

The tragedy of Carrie, which both King and De Palma treat with the gravity that it deserves, is the idea that in high school, the worst thing to happen to someone is shame, embarrassment and rejection. It taps into our most primal desire to be loved and accepted by the tribe, which translates into safety and nourishment. Carrie is denied that, again and again. She never receives the comfort that she’s craving, except in small doses, and conditionally, from Miss Collins, her gym teacher (played by the great Betty Buckley). In the opening shower sequence, she reaches out, vulnerable, for help. Blood is coming out of her body, she doesn’t know why, and she’s scared for her own safety. The girls turn to savagery in response to her off-putting plea, pelting her with sanitary napkins. When she pleads with her mother, “Why didn’t you tell me?” looking for some comfort, she’s hit with a book and lectured that her body is sinful. After the massacre at the prom, when Carrie returns home and seeks solace in the arms of her abusive mother, she says, “they laughed at me.” The trauma she experienced is not the blood or violence or fire she inflicted, but that they laughed at her, that they rejected her. Carrie is a heartbreaking and tragic victim who turns into a monster as her self-preservation instincts morph into total annihilation.

Watching the film now, I can see that what moved me when I was in high school, whether I knew it then or not (I didn’t), was that this was a film about the inner lives of women, who are allowed to be everything in this instance: the villains and the victims, the empowered and the disempowered, complex characters, with whom you can simultaneously empathize and condemn. Grappling with the film 20 years later, I realize that what Carrie articulated for me is that, yes, teenage girls, sometimes we are monsters–but we usually have a damn good reason to be. 

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