As someone who's spent a good portion of her life watching horror shows and movies, I have seen my fair share of actors try to pull off iconic villains. If you’ve seen the Carrie movie or the latest Carrie TV show on Prime Video, you’ll know Chris Hargensen truly takes the cake for pure bully villainy.
The antagonist from Carrie has become a pretty big staple on social media over the last week, thanks to the release of Mike Flanagan’s adaptation. While Chris isn’t supernatural or violently vicious like other King villains, her cruelty digs deeper. It messes with you psychologically rather than physically—until it turns physical much later in the story with the dumping of pig’s blood.
However, Chris in Mike Flanagan’s adaptation (played by Alison Thornton) is on another level this time around—and, quite frankly, this is the most I’ve ever hated her, but not for the reasons you think.
Chris is still the vicious bully you would expect
One thing I love about this adaptation is that Flanagan masterly keeps Chris as an awful villain despite the more fleshed out story for television. Though she goes through tough times, she doesn’t get a redemption arc.
In this adaptation, Chris faces serious trouble back home. Her father is losing his house and divorcing her mother. In episode 7, he also faces embezzlement charges and is sent to prison. She feels as if her mother is trying to replace her with a whole new family, and that spills over into how she feels at school. It’s this classic narrative of “hurt people hurt people.”
For a modern-day bully, this is something this character needed. I’ve seen some criticism online about how giving her this narrative takes away her vicious nature, but who really wants to watch someone just blatantly torture Carrie for eight episodes straight without some background info on them? I’m not that kind of person, and most people aren’t either.
In the end, she still makes horrendous decisions despite so many chances to change, which ultimately leads to her demise. She’s a great character. But there’s one aspect of this version that made me hate her more.
And it’s that break-in scene.
The break-in is the dumbest thing she could have possibly done
I understand that Chris is upset about Carrie’s mom (Samantha Sloyan) talking about what Chris did to Carrie. But teaming up with Billy (Arthur Conti) to break into the White home to mess with things is so head-scratching, and it made me realize Chris is not only a bully, but she’s dumb.
Why is she dumb? Well, for one, this takes place with today's technology. At some point, we see that Seth (Rahul Kohli) specifically snuck around parking lots and other places outside his neighborhood to hook up with younger people because he knew his neighbors had Ring cameras. Are we just assuming that Carrie’s neighborhood doesn’t have the same thing going on? Chris and Billy could have easily been caught on that.
But alright, let’s go beyond that. Say, no one sees them on their cameras. They break into the house —almost always a felony charge—and start moving stuff. Moving stuff isn’t that big a deal, but you want to know what is? Fingerprints. This is one of the biggest ways to leave evidence behind. They’re touching everything.
Then there’s breaking the photo—destruction of private property, which would clearly have Chris' fingerprints on it—and stealing the SD card from the camera—stealing private property, which, again, could be traced back to Billy's fingerprints.
The kicker? Both of these characters are 18. They wouldn’t go to juvenile jail; they’d go to real jail.
If Carrie’s mother isn’t, well, Carrie’s mother, anyone with a brain would go to the police instantly. They’d have an open-and-shut case. The only reason they don’t is that Margaret despises law enforcement and wants to fight back herself. It’s absolutely ridiculous, and they get off lucky.
But it’s bothersome. How can this one girl, who's basically been at the top of the food chain at her school for ages, make such a rash, stupid decision? How does she know Margaret won’t report her to the police? I have so many questions about this specifically that it makes me want to scream. In fact, I did—several times—at my television, for how stupid they are here.
Alison Thornton does a great job making me despise this character, and I hope she has a long, successful career, because her performance is so effective.
You can stream all eight episodes of Carrie season 1 right now on Prime Video.
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