Carrie White and Godzilla are a lot alike. They are both monsters that people
created through their wrath and sins. However, Godzilla has been a lot easier
to franchise. The King of all monsters even worked as a Saturday morning
cartoon. Carrie has been a lot harder. Remember the Broadway musical? Of
course, it was only a matter of time before someone tried a streaming series, despite
the failed 2002 TV-movie-backdoor pilot. Unfortunately, the angst is heavier
than the horror in creator-showrunner Mike Flanagan’s eight-episode Carrie,
which premieres today on Prime Video.
Sadly,
Carre’s father immediately dies, leaving behind his secret family. That brings
in cops and social workers, which means the home-schooled Carrietta White must
now attend public high school. Oh, lucky her. Of course, queen bee mean girl Chris
Hargensen starts bullying White immediately. At first, her bestie Sue Snell
figures it is just par for the course, but she soon feels sympathy for the
fragile White.
As fans
would expect, when White experiences extreme stress, the walls start to shake
and desks start to rattle. She is not yet fully aware of her own powers, but as
times goes on, she secretly hones her telekinetic abilities.
Naturally,
everyone streaming Carrie wants to see how well the new production stages the
madness of prom. While Flanagan teases viewers with some in media res
flashforwards in episode one, he makes them wait seven episodes, until the
season finale. Rather bizarrely, his adaptation borrows from the 2002 TV movie,
also using video-taped interviews with prom survivors as a framing device. However,
he takes the interrogations in a very different direction. (Showing a theater marquee for a Brian De Palma retrospective is also a nice touch.)
Presumably,
to pad out eight episodes, Flanagan adds a conspiratorial element. Yet, after
he teases it at the end of the season opener, he hides it for the next four episodes.
Instead, he focuses on White’s rough adjustment, which is largely defined by
bullying. Consequently, the first five installments play out like a punishingly
long After School Special. Frankly, except for the final episode, this Carrie
is never scary—not even a little bit.
Ironically,
this sabotages the big pay-off everybody knows must be coming. By devoting so
much time to “Carrie goes to Riverdale,” Flanagan regularly depicts the good faith
efforts from Snell, her boyfriend Tommy Ross, and her gym teacher Rita
Desjardin, to ease White’s transition and discourage the mean girls’ bullying.
Additionally, Flanagan and his co-writer inevitably humanize her tormentor,
Hargensen, through her parents’ divorce and the embarrassment of her imploding
wealth. In the various films, the prom is a logical crescendo, but in the
series, it doesn’t really make sense that everything suddenly explodes, even if
certain super-secret characters directly contribute to the combustion.
For Alex Cross, catching killers isn’t just a job. His motivations are painfully personal.
His wife, Maria, was gunned by an unknown killer before w meet him in both James
Patterson’s novels and Prime Video’s current series. He also unknowingly
befriended and worked with a serial killer who would eventually be dubbed the “Mastermind.”
It takes half a dozen novels for Cross to figure out the Mastermind’s true
identity. Frankly, it is unclear whether the Mastermind will be the same
Mastermind for Prime Video, due to changes made during the first and second
seasons. Regardless, the shadowy nemesis remains offstage throughout season two
of creator Ben Watkins’ Cross, which premieres today on Prime Video.
Like
the initial 8-episode run, the new season is not directly based on any of
Patterson’s novels. However, the prior season’s serial killer took some inspiration
from the DC Audience Killer, from Double Cross. Frankly, creating
memorable bad guys has always been Patterson’s strength, so perhaps Watkins
should follow the example of Reacher, which follows a specific Lee Child
novel each season.
Indeed,
season two is deeply flawed, because Cross and his allies, fellow DC cop John
Sampson and FBI Agent Kayla Craig (Kyle in the books), spend most of their time
protecting the primary bad guy, agri-tech-billionaire Lance Durand. Instead,
they chase a mysterious vigilante killing off Durand’s accomplices in his dirty
enterprise, starting with a perverse Epstein-like figure.
Viewers
want to see Cross hunting monsters on a par with Hannibal Lecter. Instead,
Wakins and the co-writers constantly humanize and justify the mysterious
Rebecca and her accomplice Donnie. This throws off the balance and creates
mixed feelings for the audience, in counterproductive ways. (This is the same reason
why U.S. Marshals, the sequel to The Fugitive failed—because it
suggested Sam Gerard specialized in chasing innocent men.)
It is a
shame, because Aldis Hodge broods commandingly as Cross and he maintains strong
chemistry with Isaiah Mustafa and Alona Tal as Sampson and Craig. Indeed, Tal
continues to be the series standout, exploring Craig’s checkered history and professional
frustrations, in complex but charismatic ways. Johnny Ray Gill also gets to
swagger and chew the scenery while making his unexpected return as convicted
criminal fixer, Bobby Trey.
Admittedly,
Matthew Lillard is often amusing as the arrogant, self-righteous Durand.
Frankly, his character could have had a lot of bite if Watkins had used him to
satirize zillionaires like Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, who advocate
wide-spread human suffering for the sake of curbing global warming or
over-population. However, those parallels were lost on the Cross writers’
room. Regardless, Lillard’s performance lacks the malevolence required from a
villain driving an entire season.
