Carrie, on Prime Video

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.

Shelby Oaks, on DVD

This ghost town had two major employers, the amusement park and the prison, both of which closed due to tragic irregularities. Darke County’s economy crashed, due to insufficient diversification, but the abandoned ruins of both predictably became a magnet for online ghost hunters like Mia Brennan-Walker’s little sister Riley. Naturally, Shelby Oaks Prison is a spooky place, because scenes there were filmed at the Ohio State Reformatory, a real-life place considered one of the most haunted prisons in America. Ominously, Brennan and her fellow “Paranormal Paranoids” disappeared shortly after their Shelby Oaks episodes. Despite the passage of years, Brennan heads back out into Darke County looking for Riley, after some admittedly strong prompting in Chris Stuckmann’s Shelby Oaks, which releases tomorrow on DVD.

Shelby Oaks is not found footage, but most of the first act plays out that way, as news reports and the Paranormal Paranoids’ archival footage provide most of the exposition. Brennan and her three friends started posting spooky footage back when it was a relatively new phenomenon, so they quickly built a following. Initially, their disappearance was dismissed a publicity stunt, but as the mystery persisted, they became online causes célèbres.

Indeed, yet another film crew happens to be interviewing Brennan-Walker when Wilson Miles rings her doorbell—just so he can commit suicide in front of her. At this point, the film drops the found footage perspective, so we can see Brennan-Walker secretly pocket the mini-video tape he drops. Following Miles’ trail leads her back to Shelby Oaks Prison. Along the way, she detects signs of some serious demonic iconography.

To a large extent, the first hour of Shelby Oaks plays out like a fusion of Blair Witch Project and one of the better online/reality TV ghost hunting crews meeting their match, as maybe best exemplified by Grave Encounters. However, Stuckmann marshals and recombines those elements with remarkable dexterity. It might be familiar, but it works really well.

King’s The Life of Chuck

At least Chuck Krantz won’t have to worry about fees for 401K withdrawals. Apparently, he is retiring right in the midst of doomsday. The world is ending, but his grateful colleagues are celebrating with billboards all over town. People are definitely confused and, initially, viewers will be too. However, director-screenwriter Mike Flanagan eventually brings everything together in The Life of Chuck, based on the Stephen King novella, which opens this Friday in New Yok theaters.

It is the end of the world—and the end of an era wherever Krantz works. California is sinking into the sea, the internet and infrastructure are failing, and suicides are skyrocketing. The apocalyptic crisis compels school teacher Marty Anderson to reconnect with his ex-wife Felicia Gordon, an exhausted RN, who feels a similar desire for his familiar and comforting presence. Yet, amid all the chaos, they both find all the Chuck Krantz signage rather bizarre.

What is going on here? Act II illuminates little, especially since Flanagan’s adapted narrative flows in reverse order, ending with Act I. It also happens to be a dance number, featuring Krantz and Taylor Franck, a drummer played by “The Pocket Queen,” according to the credits. You might guess she knows how to socket in the pocket, which indeed turns out to be the case.

All will eventually be explained in Act I, which is presented as the third act. Finally, we witness Krantz’s childhood, which is sometimes sad and sometimes mysterious, but the under-sized teen also has his small triumphs.

Frankly, some viewers might be tempted to watch the walk-outs, which could very well be plentiful. However, that would be a mistake, because you really need to see the entire film for all the pieces to fall into place. The good news is the a-ha moment really happens and gives pretty darned significant meaning to everything that came before.

This is definitely Stephen King more in his Shawshank or Stand By Me bag, even though there are considerable fantastical elements—that would be spoilery to describe. It is hard to categorize and it will confuse some viewers, but this is probably the best King adaptation since The Outsider.

Mike Flanagan’s Before I Wake

Most people think butterflies are pretty and completely harmless, but Lepidopterophobia, the fear of butterflies really is a thing. It sort of makes sense when you consider the traditional association between butterflies and the souls of the dead. Technically, it is a death’s head hawkmoth in Silence of the Lambs, but we’ll still give them that one. Young Cody Morgan is a butterfly lover, but he will turn his foster parents Lepidopterophobic in Mike Flanagan’s Before I Wake (trailer here), which finally gets an American release via Netflix, starting today.

Mark and Jessie Hobson are still grieving the loss of their little boy Sean, but they believe they are ready to be foster parents. On paper, Morgan would be a perfect fit for them, because they all know tragedy. His single-mother died at an early age and he experienced mysterious mishaps in his subsequent foster homes. Unfortunately, what happened to his previous fosters will soon start happening to the Hobsons.

It begins with the strange but ostensibly beautiful manifestations of butterflies while Morgan is asleep. However, as he becomes interested in his late pseudo-predecessor, Sean starts to appear before his stunned parents. Somehow, Morgan has the power to project his dreams into the waking world. Jessie Hobson finds it a solace, but her husband suspects it is deeply unhealthy. Regardless, Morgan always struggles to stay awake, because he knows something sinister and Slender Man-ish also haunts his dreams.

It is a shame Wake was caught up in the bankruptcy Hell of its original distributor, because it is a mature and deeply resonant film, especially by horror genre standards. Fortunately, Flanagan is still well on his way to being a genre brand-name, thanks to his terrific Stephen King adaptation, Gerald’s Game and the expectation-exceeding Ouija prequel, Origin of Evil. However, Kate Bosworth and Thomas Jane do some of their best work as the Hobsons, so they really missed out not getting a wide theatrical release.

There are plenty of horror movies that use the death of a child as its catalyst, but Flanagan & Jeff Howard’s screenplay addresses it with uncompromising honesty. You can see in the performances of Jane and Bosworth that this couple is still hurting. In a small but memorable role, Jay Karnes adds an authoritative but compassionate tone to the film, as Jessie Hobson’s support group leader.

There are definitely some scary moments in Wake, but there are also strong elements of psychological mystery. If you like horror, but your family or roommates don’t, this might be one you could sneak past the gatekeeper. It is a quality film, so it is nice to finally have it available for consumption in the U.S. market. Enthusiastically recommended for horror and dark thriller fans, Before I Wake starts streaming today (1/5) on Netflix.

Gerald’s Game: Mike Flanagan Adapts Stephen King

Only Stephen King would dedicate a book that revolves around S&M sex to his wife and her five sisters. Sure, it is about empowerment, but it is still weird. It was also considered one of the books least favored by King’s fans and the hardest to adapt for the big screen. Rather inconveniently, Jessie Burlingame is all tied up (or cuffed up) and can’t come to the phone in Mike Flanagan’s Gerald’s Game (trailer here), which starts streaming tomorrow on Netflix.

This was supposed to be a naughty weekend that would help Jessie and Gerald Burlingame rekindle their marriage. However, the handcuffs and rough role-playing just didn’t work for her. First that made her husband resentful and then it made him dead from a massive stress coronary. Unfortunately, she is still hand-cuffed to the knobby four poster bed.

The newly widowed Burlingame slowly realizes she is trapped and nobody will come looking for them in their out-of-the-way vacation home until it is too late. To make matters worse, a Cujo-light stray dog starts nibbling on Gerald’s body. She still has the strength to shoe him away from her, but soon she will be too weak.

This is the perfect time to panic, but her subconscious conjures up visions of a particularly dismissive version of Gerald and an idealistically self-reliant analog of herself to goad and encourage herself to survive. Conversely, the extreme trauma of her situation spurs flashbacks to episodes of molestation and emotional manipulation from Burlingame’s childhood, which are much less motivating. She also starts having visions of a boogeyman she starts to call the “Moonlight Man,” who must surely be a hallucination, right?

To a large extent, Gerald’s Game functions like a memory play, but with a ticking clock and life-and-death stakes. The adaptation penned by Flanagan and Jeff Howard could almost be repurposed as a stage play, but it would be hard for Burlingame to have conversations with the her she always wanted to be. Regardless, they defy expectations with a high-percentile Stephen King movie, ranking with Misery and Cronenberg’s original Dead Zone.

Bruce Greenwood is one of the most reliable character actors working today, but he shows a fiercely malevolent side in Gerald’s Game that we have never had the chance to see from him before. He is quite flamboyantly sinister for a dead man, but Greenwood is also frighteningly believable, leading us to suspect this is closer to the real Gerald Burlingame than his wife ever admitted to herself. Carla Gugino does some of the best work of her career as both Jessie Burlingames, pretty much covering the entire range of human emotion. Of course, Carel Struycken (the Giant in Twin Peaks and Lurch in the Adams Family movies) is perfectly cast as the Midnight Man.

This was supposed to a triumphant year for King, thanks to the one-two punch of The Dark Tower and It. 2017 will indeed turn out that way for the Maine Mangler, but it will be due to the tandem of It (a monster hit) and Gerald’s Game. This could be the first Netflix original film that generates the publicity heat of their original series. Likewise, it should skyrocket Flanagan to the top-tier of horror directors, following his way, way better than it needed to be Blumhouse prequel, Ouija: Origin of Evil. The sexual abuse scenes (a suspiciously frequent King motif) might have been trimmed a little, but as it is, Gerald’s Game is quite a smartly conceived, nerve-janglingly tense and claustrophobic horror thriller. Better than It, Gerald’s Game is highly recommended for fans of King and psychologically twisted tales when it launches tomorrow (9/29) on Netflix.

Ouija: Origin of Evil—Back to the Board

Ouija boards must be the most controversial and feared item found in typical toy stores. It makes you wonder why Hasbro still makes them. Maybe it is the hundreds of thousands of units they sell each year with virtual no marketing expenditure, but we’re just guessing here. They even licensed the brand for a horror film as part of their studio development deal. Did the story end with 2014’s Ouija? Who knows, but we can hope. Instead, it is time to flashback to when it all began in Mike Flanagan’s considerably superior prequel, Ouija: Origin of Evil (trailer here), a Blumhouse production, which opens today nationwide.

It is 1965, eight years before The Exorcist scared the pants off everyone and made Ouija boards synonymous sulfur-spewing Hell. When Alice Zander decides to incorporate a board into her phony spiritualist act, it doesn’t set off any alarm bells. She is a bit of a scam artist, but she really tries to give her clients the sort of consolation and closure she herself lacks. It has been a year or so since her husband Roger died in an accident, but her teenage daughter Lina and ten-ish-year-old daughter Doris are not even close to being over it. The Ouija board will not help.

It turns out there is an evil entity in the house, which uses the board as a catalyst to possess little Doris. It will take Mother Zander a while to accept the obvious, preferring to think the Ouija board really has brought her into contact with her late husband. However, Lina recognizes the weirdness of Doris’s Regan MacNeil behavior, which will be confirmed by her kindly Catholic school teacher, Father Tom.

Ironically, Origin is far better than the original film, but it is unfairly restricted by the previously established backstory. Flanagan is a considered an up-and-coming genre director who definitely shows some chops here. Most tellingly, the film carries a (mild by genre standards) PG-13 rating, yet Flanagan still earns some legit scares. In fact, the 1960s period look and vibe actually makes it feel more real and grounded. Like Blatty’s The Exorcist, Origin also wears its Catholic perspective on its sleeve. Terms like evil and innocence have very real meaning it this film.

To that end, Henry Thomas (yes, the kid from E.T.) is terrific as Father Tom. The scenes of his initial investigation represent some first class horror movie-making. Yet, the third act inevitably collapses into a blur of bodies flying through the air, just as we expected it would. Not to overstate matters, but there is a tragic poignancy to Elizabeth Reaser’s portrayal of Alice Zander. Lulu Wilson is also Bad Seed creepy as the possessed, mucus-gurgling, eyes-rolling-into-the-back-of-her-head Doris. Frankly, Annalise Basso mostly comes off as an obnoxious teen, but that is pretty much what Lina Zander is. Hardcore fans will also get a kick out of knowing Doug Jones is the one beneath the black ghoul’s make-up and special effects.

Production designer Patricio M. Farrell painstakingly recreates the miserable not-so-swinging, polyester sixties and cinematographer Michael Fimognari gives it all an eerie Conjuring­-esque glow. Given the origins of Origin, it certainly exceeds expectations. Despite the baggage straining the third act, it is an expertly-executed exercise in Catholic-influenced demonic horror. Worth a look for horror fans who can appreciate a good set-up and forgive the lame ending, Ouija: Origin of Evil opens in wide release today (10/21), including the AMC Empire in New York.