By: Kelly Kearney
Carrie Redd has officially gone viral, and unfortunately, she’s not the only one getting dragged into the fallout. As Chris’s anonymous hit-list account turns the entire school against itself, Carrie finds herself caught between a mother determined to keep her locked away, classmates determined to tear her down and a grief she can’t outrun. But when a seemingly innocent night out lands Carrie at the very place her father died, the bullying takes a dangerous turn, and Carrie finally lets her anger out. And let’s just say, the lights aren’t the only thing that explodes.
Carrie’s Casualties
We open in a flashback to Hebei, China, in 2010, as the narrator tells us about the longest traffic jam in the nation’s history. The highway was bottlenecked for 12 days, with more than 60 miles of cars and shipping trucks backed up. A young woman on her way to visit her ailing parents winds up trapped in her vehicle along with thousands of others. Days go by with no sleep, limited food, no sanitation and unbearable heat. We watch as she wipes the sweat from her forehead, climbs out of her car and crawls onto the roof for air and a new view. She closes her eyes, trying to find some relief from all the pressure building around her and inside her own mind. That’s when she feels the breeze in her hair, and the sound of the traffic jam quiets as she centers herself. When she opens her eyes, she realizes she’s floating high above the ground. Understandably, she panics and falls as the people below watch in disbelief. One person in the massive crowd records it, and when the video goes viral, viewers are divided. Some think it’s a hoax, while others believe she really was floating. In the end, though, all that matters is that people really love to watch women fall.
We cut to the fall-out of the Carrie Redd account, where students are watching the video of Carrie (Summer H. Howell) crying and devastated on the bathroom floor. She’s terrified, while everyone else is excited to watch her fall. Carrie is horrified by the video and the increasing number of shares. She realizes she’s not the only person caught in the crosshairs of the anonymous social media account. Sure, Carrie is the main event, but the page has slowly turned into an attack on everyone. Private moments are exposed, physical features mocked, eating disorders and expanding waistlines are turned into punchlines, and sexual experiences are put on blast. Chris (Alison Thornton) spreads shame like a disease across the school, and the students quickly follow her lead, bullying each other with slut-shaming graffiti, whispers, snickers and stares. They even send anonymous videos of each other to the Carrie Redd account. Chris is hurting, and her way of dealing with that pain is by inflicting it on anyone she sees as beneath her. Carrie, Brooklyn (Rowan Danielle) and any other student who stands out as a little different become easy targets.
The results send violent waves across the school. Kids are fighting, arguing, and one even put used gum in Carrie’s hair and tampons in her bookbag. The entire school is on blast, including the teachers–nobody is safe from the wrath of Chris Hargensen, even though nobody knows who’s behind the account. In fact, Chris is buddying up to Carrie even more to throw people off her guilt. So is Sue (Siena Agudong), who may be the only person genuinely looking out for her.
We cut to Maragret (Samantha Sloyan) at work cleaning bathrooms while watching videos on her cell phone of Carrie through those hidden cameras in her bedroom. While at school, her daughter is more alone than ever. Thanks to Sue playing surrogate mom, she at least has someone to pull the gum out of hair. Sue really does care for Carrie, and hates to see what Chris’ anger is doing to her and their classmates. Not that she has time to fully focus on it. She is too busy avoiding Tommy (Joel Oulette) while she privately panics over being five days late for her period.
While the whole school is obsessed with this bullying account, from the teachers to the students to the principal, Carrie, who lacks a cell phone, only has access to the library computers and can’t look away. Emaline (Thalia Dudek) questions why she can’t just tune it all out. She tries to put Carrie’s mind at ease, telling her that nobody actually thinks Carrie Redd is her, but Carrie changes the subject to their assignments as a student walks past and calls her a freak. She’s doing her best to pretend it doesn’t bother her, but how could it not? The profile photo is her worst moment, and now it’s the header for everyone’s worst moments too. When Emaline tries to defend Carrie and lashes out at the girl calling her a freak, Carrie tells her there’s enough pain going around. She doesn’t need to add to it.
On her way to class, Carrie sees two girls fighting over the account, each accusing the other of posting something about her. The argument escalates until Miss Desjardin (Amber Midthunder) winds up getting hit in the face.
In class, Carrie overhears Tina (Josie Totah) talking about a fellow student who was put in the hospital by her parents after an eating disorder mentioned on the hit-list meme account. She says Carrie kicked her out of school, and Chris notices she’s paying attention. Tina quickly clarifies that she doesn’t actually mean Carrie, she means the account. Besides, the girl has supposedly been bulimic since middle school. As Sue remains distracted, Chris and Tina are thick as thieves, with Tina supplying the photos from the party. She is clearly the one helping Chris keep the shaming campaign going, and she is doing it all to be part of the popular clique. To throw her off their scent, Chris promises she’ll get to the bottom of whoever is messing with Carrie because she cares so much.
Tina, who has been trying to elbow her way into Chris’s clique, asks where she’s heard the name Carrie Redd before. Then she turns her attention to Sue, who’s in her own little world, staring at her phone and tracking her period. Tommy (Joel Oulette) interrupts, and it’s obvious Tina is trying to pin the account on Sue and get her out of Chris’s life so she can assume the BFF position.
Workplace Bullies
At work, Margaret bites her tongue and goes to talk to her pink-haired manager, Joanie (Danielle Klaudt) about getting put back on the register–the job she originally applied for. Joanie hesitates and says they can bring it up again in a few weeks. That’s when Margaret points out that she was never given the required 10 days’ notice for a shift change. She expects her manager to follow the rule book. Taking a long sip of her tea, Joanie comes clean about the real reason Margaret was moved to janitorial services. It’s not because anyone thinks she deserves to clean feces off the bathroom floor every night. It’s because there were a lot of complaints about Margaret on the register, including written complaints that made their way to corporate. She has a problem keeping her opinions to herself and that doesn’t fly with shoppers who felt she was shaming them with every purchase. Now that corporate is involved, the rule book is sort of pushed aside.
Joanie admits she stepped in to save Margaret’s job because she knows that if the mom loses it, which was the recommendation from corporate, it could have repercussions for her custody case with Carrie. She didn’t want that to happen to her.
It’s clear Joanie is trying to help Margaret, and while she says she is grateful, she still doesn’t love cleaning toilets at night. The young manager promises that if Margaret doesn’t cause any more problems, keeps her head down and does her job, she can tell her boss that Margaret has turned things around. Maybe then she can go back to the register.
Back at school, Miss Desjardin has a black eye from getting hit in the face, and the other teachers are gathered in the lounge discussing Carrie Redd. All of them are upset about the account, since most of them have been targeted. Now they all want to know who’s behind it.
They float the idea of taking everyone’s phones away during class, but Principal Grayle (Matthew Lillard) reminds them that we live in a country where school shootings are common. Parents demand that their children have their phones in case they need to get ahold of them. The account is anonymous anyway, so they can’t police the internet. They can, however, guard the hallways. The principal asks all the teachers to stand in the halls and let the students know they’re being watched. He doesn’t want another incident like what happened to Miss Desjardin, so he reminds them not to put themselves in harm’s way. They just need to make themselves known, making it more inconvenient for whoever is behind the account to continue taking photos and videos.
Later, at home, Margaret senses something is up with Carrie. She says she is not eating or sleeping, which prompts Carrie to ask how she knows she’s not sleeping. Margaret lies and says she knows her daughter’s face better than she knows her own. She can tell something is wrong, but Carrie shrugs it off as being busy with schoolwork and stressed about adjusting to her new life. Before Margaret leaves for work, she tells Carrie she’s there to help if she needs anything, but Carrie isn’t about to tell the woman who locked her in a prayer closet what’s happening at school. Margaret might never let her leave the house again.
Later that night, while cleaning up after dinner, Carrie drops a dish and knocks over the trash can. As she’s cleaning up, she finds a crumpled letter from the funeral home trying to contact her mother about picking up her father’s remains. At that moment, Carrie sees her father (Tahmoh Penikett) sitting at the kitchen table again. As her emotions begin to rattle the kitchen, her father disintegrates into ashes. Carrie, crying and confused as to why her mother kept this a secret, flees the house, and every lamppost she passes flickers.
Across town, Sue is sitting in her house, still waiting for her period while simultaneously looking over her email from Duke’s admissions. Her attention is drawn to the sound of honking horns outside her window. That’s when she sees Carrie walking in a daze, nearly causing an accident. Sue runs outside to see what’s wrong and notices Carrie isn’t even wearing shoes, her feet are bloody and her eyes are filled with tears. She invites her inside, where her mother (Mapuana Makia) bandages Carrie’s foot, offers her a pair of Sue’s old tennis shoes and dinner, followed by a promise to drive her home.
Upstairs, Sue’s room impresses Carrie, who is fascinated by all the awards and trophies packed onto the shelves. She mentions that her mother would never allow her to do any of these things, and then opens up about their relationship a little. She says she never tells her mother anything important. They talk, but not about things that matter. Carrie, of course, means her father’s remains, and probably the panic over her period too. Sue starts to feel for her and asks if she’s talked to her mother about what’s going on at school but her mother would pull her out if she knew, and she would wind up in foster care. It’s better to be strong and smile than let the anger get to her. “There’s already so much anger in the world.”
At the Hargensen home, Chris overhears her father (Michael Trucco) talking business. Apparently, a construction site is being shut down because there was a death. When she hears the name Ralph White and realizes her father couldn’t care less about what happened to him, she sees how entwined their family is with the Whites.
When Chris asks who Ralph White is, her father says he’s nobody. She tells him that she has a new student, Carrie White, whose father just died. He puts two and two together and asks what that prayer-closet girl is like. She barely gets to answer before they hear a truck outside. Her dad knows exactly what’s happening and freaks out. He tells the repo man he’s going to call the bank, but the simple misunderstanding quickly makes it clear that he doesn’t have control over his life anymore. His finances are dwindling on the heels of this impending divorce and business troubles from the site accident.
He tries to reason with the repo-man claiming he doesn’t need to tow Christine’s car away, but that’s exactly what happens. Chris panics and wants to know what’s happening to her car, but her angry dad tells her to shut up because he’s trying to handle it. He is doing a bad job of it. His financial status is one of the few things Chris depends on.
As her car is hauled away, she texts her best friend Sue, who is busy hanging out with Carrie. That sets Chris off, who then texts Billy Nolan (Arthur Conti) a picture of her cleavage and asks him to come pick her up. He, of course, responds immediately.
Choosing Chaos
Over at Sue’s house, she tells Carrie that she has every right to feel upset about the letter she found. She tells her she needs to talk to her mother because she’s probably going through the same pain. They can rely on each other.
When she asks what Ralph was like, Carrie calls him “complicated.” He was a man who lived in fear of everything, from chemtrails to the deep state. He believed every conspiracy theory was true and every truth beyond their front door was deadly. Now that Carrie is outside the house and spending more time at the library, she’s starting to think her father didn’t have to be afraid. Then she second-guesses herself and wonders if maybe he was right after all. As soon as he was gone, the government started monitoring them. This, followed by Carrie Redd, has her wondering if her dad knew more about the world than she currently does. Sue asks whether, now that she’s experienced the outside world, the cruelty of her peers and Carrie Redd, would she ever go back to that closet and live as if none of this had happened? Carrie thinks about it for a second and then says, “No. Knowing is better than not knowing.”
Next, we head to Seth Peist’s (Rahul Kohli) house, where he’s cooking dinner for Rita Desjardin, who is preoccupied with the Carrie Redd account. She knew bullies growing up, she was one, but this is on a whole other level. She shows him a photo of herself with a tag about free sexual favors during study hall. Peist jokes that she should charge for those, then shrugs off her concerns with the classic, “all kids are awful.” He thinks it will eventually blow over when they get bored. She points out that he’s on the account, too, but he dismisses her again as being too young and emotional. Apparently, with career longevity comes a certain apathy for both kid criminals and punishment. It’s an odd way for the English teacher to show the woman he’s dating that he takes her seriously.
It seems Seth is jaded and isn’t exactly enamored with the idea that he’s going to shape young minds. He might have won “Teacher of the Year,” but he’s also realistic. He tells Rita that she might change a few minds, “but the rest are pretty much garbage.” He advises her not to give the behavior too much attention, and let it play out. Eventually they’ll move on to another project and forget all about Carrie Redd. He ends the conversation with a reminder for her to never fall for the trap of thinking they’re her peers. “Your peers can hurt you. These are just kids. Cruel, yes, but easily distracted.”
Speaking of villainous kids, Billy takes Chris to a place to park and drink, and all she does is spend the time complaining about all the ways she’s been replaced. While standing by the rails of an overpass looking down at the cars whizzing by, she rants about her mother replacing her with Brooklyn, and her father with her soon-to-be new husband. Now her car has been repossessed, her dreams of Duke and getting out of town are slipping away, and she’s stuck there, living as an embarrassment. Billy seems bored with her privileged and “poor me” rant and tosses his beer bottle over the railing. Chris gets worried that he could have injured someone below, but he shrugs off her concerns and tempts her to do the same. He becomes the physical manifestation of her anger–morphed into chaos. He grabs a brick and dangles it over the moving cars, considering himself some kind of savior or god deciding whether to drop it and kill someone below. He holds all the cards, while the people below have no idea that he and Chris are up there deciding their fate. He gets close to dropping it and tells Chris he wouldn’t do it unless she asked him to. She approaches the railing and looks down as the cars race by. He is temptation, he is chaos, he is payback. He’s everything she’s feeling, which is why she tells him to do it. Suddenly, he drops the brick, and it goes barreling down, smashing the side mirror off a car. Nobody dies, but they could have, and the feeling is exhilarating for them both.
Later that night at work, Margaret is also choosing a little chaos. She swipes Joanie’s teacup and takes it into the bathroom, where she swirls it around a filthy toilet full of brown wastewater before placing it back on the manager’s desk. When she walks past the break room, she sees two fellow employees–people of color, and devises a terrible plan. She pretends to love their boss, and says she doesn’t believe the rumors that the woman has been accused of using racial slurs at work. She asks if either of them has ever heard her say something like that to them. They shake their heads no, but being among the only diverse employees starts to make them wonder. If Joanie is pegged as a racist and complaints are filed against her, Margaret gets what she wants. Joanie gets fired, and Margaret gets her register back. So much for truth, goodness and the Christian way. Margaret is a liar, a racist, a plotter, a pot stirrer, and someone who really doesn’t like hearing the word no.
Everyone’s Avoiding Something
The next morning, Carrie walks to class as students fight in the background. Carrie Redd has the whole town of teens at each other’s throats.
After school, Billy is there to pick up Chris and her new sidekick, Tina. Chris asks Sue to come along, but Sue has soccer practice and declines. This ticks Chris off because Sue blew her off for Carrie the night before, and now she’s blowing her off for practice too? What kind of best friend is she? She doesn’t even know about the car being repossessed.
When they see Carrie walking down the path, Chris sees an opportunity and calls her over. If Sue won’t come, Carrie will. At first, Carrie says no, but Chris eventually convinces her to get in. She tells them she has to be home before her mother gets off her shift, and Chris promises her she will be. When Tommy sees Sue talking to Chris he calls out to her. She seems to be avoiding him, so she jumps right into the car with Billy, Chris, Tina and Carrie. Everyone is avoiding something in that car.
At work, Margaret overhears that Joanie is being put on leave while they investigate the complaints of racism. She smiles as she sees the woman take a sip from her tainted tea cup. It won’t be long before Margaret is back on register, shaming the shoppers of Chamberlain one sugary cereal at a time.
While Billy is getting gas, Sue goes to the bathroom, leaving Tina, Chris and Carrie in the car. Tina pulls out a container of gummies and offers Chris one, and Carrie, who loves candy but was never allowed to eat it, takes two. Apparently her father used to hide sweets for her behind Maragret’s back, and the gummies remind Carrie of him. Tina assumes Carrie knows they contain THC and comments on what a liberal family she must have. The joke goes right over Carrie’s head. That’s when Tina gets out of the car to join Sue in the bathroom. Carrie talks a little bit about her father, and the guilt of knowing how he died washes over Chris’ face for just a moment. Now Carrie is gobbling up more gummies Tina left behind, and Chris watches with anticipation for what’s to come. These sweets might not have Red Dye 40 in them, which Ralph White thought altered people’s DNA, but they do contain a little something special in them that is sure to put Carrie in a vulnerable state.
Inside the gas station, Tina spies on Sue buying a pregnancy test and secretly records her. A little while later, and after a lot of gummies have been devoured, Billy’s car pulls up to Chris’s father’s construction site, the same place where Ralph White died. Carrie asks what they’re doing there, having no idea that is the last place her father was seen alive. Chris doesn’t mention the significance of the location, instead, she just says she’s tired of partying in the same places and knew this one would be empty. That’s when Billy cuts the chains on the front gate, and a very smiley Carrie and the others make their way inside. As the effects of the gummies start kicking in, Sue asks what’s going on. Chris comes clean but refuses to admit she helped drug Carrie. She pretends she thought Carrie knew what she was taking, and Tina backs her up. Now Carrie, who is very stoned, simply says she’s had them before, but her mother doesn’t know. She’s not a fan of high-fructose corn syrup and Red Dye 40. Sue is about to say something, but Chris convinces her to let Carrie enjoy herself. After all, she seems to be having a good time. Sue watches Carrie and agrees, and then heads toward the porta-potties, as Chris makes some comment about filthy Tommy giving her a UTI.
While Sue is inside the porta-potty taking the pregnancy test, Chris starts telling the story of the man who died at that very construction site. She says it is haunted, and that the man was inside a trench when the ground caved in and buried him under tons of concrete. Carrie overhears what she’s saying and realizes she’s standing directly in front of the place where her father died. She’s high for the first time in her life and facing the trauma she’s yet to deal with. The entire time, Chris watches her reaction like a predator tracking its prey. That’s when Carrie hears something and is drawn towards the edge of the trench. She thinks she sees someone’s hands reaching out from the darkness, and as she gets closer to take a better look, the hand reaches out to grab her. In her panic and inebriated state, Carrie slips and falls into the trench. Crawling through the mud, she calls out for her father, and that’s when suddenly, the ground gives way, and concrete falls, burying her.
She screams, but when Chris, Billy and Tina approach the edge, they see Carrie writhing around in the mud, high out of her mind and having a panic attack. Outside the porta-potty, Sue checks the test strip and it reads negative. She takes a breath of relief, but it doesn’t last long because she hears Carrie screaming in the distance. She takes off running toward the sound and sees Tina recording Carrie who is terrified and traumatized.
Sue freaks out on all of them. Tina–still recording, keeps repeating that she’s sorry as Billy hauls Carrie out of the trench. The caved-in were all in her mind, but the visions weren’t any less distressing. When Sue realizes Tina is still recording, she grabs her phone, and tosses it away.
That’s when Tina, also high on gummies, admits that she’s been secretly posting on the Carrie Redd page. She’s been recording and secretly taking photos of everyone, sending them anonymously to Chris so nobody could tie the crimes to either of them. She did it all to be included.”This is worth more than those hundred likes.” When Tina realizes she’s said too much, she practically grovels at Chris’s feet for forgiveness, but the deed is done. Everyone now knows Chris and Tina are behind the bullying site that’s been tearing apart the school.
Chris sees Sue and Carrie staring at her and tries to blow it off by claiming “It’s just a joke. Just a meme account, but not to Carrie. She is devastated, covered in mud and crying, and asks why Chris would bring her to the place her father died if it was just a joke. Chris turns on Sue, calling out her “Saint Snell” act and accusing her of babysitting Carrie because a teacher asked her to. She never cared about Carrie, and besides, she was the one who made up the nickname on the account.
Carrie looks broken, and Sue has had enough. She refuses to ride with Chris, Billy and Tina, and instead, she tries to chase after Carrie, who has to walk miles home in the cold night. Chris stops her and continues to badger her, blaming Sue for not being there for her as if that somehow excuses what she did. Sue then asks the obvious question: “What is wrong with you?” Chris responds, “Take your fucking pick.”
At home, Carrie’s bed is empty when her mother checks on her that night. Back at the construction site, Sue waits for Tommy to come pick her up, and when he arrives the two embrace. She’s devastated by everything she’s just learned and leans on him for support.
Finally, we see Carrie covered in mud, making her way home. She’s standing in the middle of the road, lost, confused and angry. Feeling overwhelmed, she lets out a primal scream and every streetlight explodes around her. Even the car windows crack, and headlights flash on as horns blare the sound of her fury.
That’s when Carrie hears her name and turns to see Emaline smiling. “I knew it, she says as she sees the wreckage of the traumatized girl’s meltdown. Carrie instantly denies it, insisting it wasn’t her, but Emaline knows it was, and instead of being scared of her, she’s happy about it. Emaline sees Carrie is okay and helps her out of the street, getting her home to where her mother is waiting at the kitchen table, hands clasped in prayer, fingers practically digging into her skin as she tries to control her rage.
Before Margaret can start yelling at her daughter, she sees the state Carrie is in–muddied and crying out that her mother was right about everything. People are evil. They tricked her and they were laughing at her. She begs her mother for help, and Margaret promises that whatever those kids did, together, “we will make them pay.”