Editorials
Remembering “Clock Tower 3”!
Survival Horror has been making a comeback these past few years. With terrifying games like Outlast, Alien: Isolation and the unexpectedly brilliant Resident Evil 7, horror fans can rejoice once more with the largest selection of fright-inducing video games since the late nineties. However, with the increasing influx of interactive horror media, a few hugely influential franchises have unfortunately been forgotten. One of my personal favorite game series, Clock Tower, is sadly among them.
Clock Tower began as a 1995 Japan-exclusive Super Famicon cartridge, which was later ported to the PC and PlayStation. This innovative game was similar to classic point and click adventure titles, but with a horrific twist. As you progressed through the levels, collecting items and solving puzzles, you’d be chased around by a terrifying murderer wielding a giant pair of scissors (not unlike Cropsy and his garden shears from the 1981 slasher film The Burning).
With no real combat system to speak of, the player would be forced to flee from the iconic Scissorman, resulting in some of the most intense chase sequences in video game history. Naturally, the game was successful, resulting in a number of sequels, mostly for the PlayStation. The first of these sequels, also called Clock Tower, is fondly remembered as a gaming classic and considered by some to be the best game in the series, with a clever branching story and fear-inducing gameplay.
Familiar, isn’t it?
The next sequel, Clock Tower II: The Struggle Within initially seemed like more of the same, and was heavily criticized for not updating the archaic controls and interface, not to mention the disconnected plot. The game had its moments, with the same intense chases and brain-melting puzzles, but it’s still widely regarded as the worst in the series.
That brings us to what might very well be the strangest and possibly most creative game in this already peculiar franchise, 2002’s Clock Tower 3. Directed by the renowned Japanese filmmaker Kinji Fukasaku, of Battle Royale fame, this game is more of an original entity that borrows and adds to the Clock Tower formula rather than a proper sequel to the previous titles.
Set in modern day London, Clock Tower 3 follows the terrifying misadventures of Alyssa Hamilton, a fourteen-year-old girl who returns home from boarding school after receiving an alarming letter from her mother. From there, the story sprouts into nearly incomprehensible madness as Alyssa gets involved with serial-killer-possessing spirits, time-travel, and piano-playing ghosts, all the while searching for her mysterious mother and grandfather.
Breaking Clock Tower tradition, the gameplay here is more reminiscent of traditional survival horror titles like Silent Hill and Resident Evil, with suspenseful fixed camera positions and 3D controls and no trace of the original point and click interface. Although the game still lacks a traditional combat system (for the most part), enemy encounters are frequent, forcing you to find unconventional hiding places.
Boo!
The meat of the game consists in time-travelling to certain periods of history to solve puzzles, allowing the spirits of murder victims to head into the afterlife. As this is going on, you’ll naturally be pursued by a varied selection of possessed serial killers depending on the time and place. Unlike previous games, however, Alyssa is equipped with limited amounts of holy water to stun her enemies long enough for her to make a break for it.
These memorable (if somewhat exaggerated) antagonists are easily the best part of the game. Most of them are actually based on real life murderers, adding a supernatural twist that makes them even more menacing. The chase sequences here are honestly the best in the franchise, as the soundtrack and virtual camera placement make these scenes legitimately thrilling. This quintessential slasher movie experience of hiding in a closet or under a bed and helplessly observing as a masked maniac stalks you through the night is downright exhilarating. It’s really no surprise that so many modern games have borrowed this terrifying formula.
Clock Tower 3 is undoubtedly full of frights and clever design choices, but it’s still far from perfect. Hell, despite loving the hell out of this game, I’m not sure if I can even say that it’s “good”. I can get past the repetitive gameplay and occasional quirks, but then, there are several moments of mood-shattering absurdity that come close to breaking the game.
Once you’ve finished a level, Alyssa will be forced to confront these serial killers in one of the most bizarre examples of a boss fight in gaming history, as she undergoes a Sailor-Moon-esque transformation sequence and equips an ancient bow that fires magical arrows. These boss fights may be intense, but they’re undeniably stupid and destroy the haunting atmosphere of the rest of the game. That being said, I particularly love how the enemy health bar in these sequences is determined by their number of victims and the length of their prison sentence.
I wish I was making this up.
Nevertheless, when Clock Tower 3 works, it’s amazing, and many of these concepts demand revisiting in future games. When it’s not falling prey to its own ridiculousness, the game actually does a great job at emulating the thrills and atmosphere of a good slasher movie, which is why I love it so much.
Sadly, this game also marked the end of the official Clock Tower series, and survival horror as a whole eventually fell out of favor as well. There were a few spiritual sequels after this (with a new one called Remothered: Tormented Fathers still in development), namely Haunting Ground (which is amazing) and Nightcry (which isn’t), but the Clock Tower franchise is basically dead at this point. This is a damned shame as modern horror games owe so much to these games, but they still aren’t as revered as some other horror series.
Either way, despite some insane moments, Clock Tower 3 has a special place in my heart. Even if there’s never another game in the series, I’m glad that I can still pop this one into my dusty old PlayStation 2 and remind myself of a bygone era of survival horror.
Five decades ago, Stephen King published the story of a bullied girl with telekinetic powers and forever changed the world of horror.
Carrie follows a high school misfit who seeks revenge for a hideous prank by psychically destroying her senior prom. The name Carrie White has become synonymous with the concept of a formal dance thanks to a flawless adaptation from Brian De Palma. Now fifty years after the film’s release, Mike Flanagan is putting his own stamp on the troubling story.
Rather than a feature film, the writer/director will expand King’s relatively slim debut novel into an eight-episode miniseries for Amazon Prime set to premiere on October 7.
Flanagan is no stranger to the world of Stephen King. A long-time Constant Reader, he first made waves with his daring adaptation of Gerald’s Game (2017), a novel many fans considered un-filmable. His underrated Doctor Sleep merges the disparate plot of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining with King’s original source material, and his 2024 genre-bending tearjerker The Life of Chuck faithfully executes one of the author’s most metaphysical novellas.
He’s currently mired in pre-production for an expansive adaptation of The Dark Tower series, keystone to King’s connected universe, and Warner Bros. recently announced that Flanagan will helm a new version of The Mist, King’s 1980 novella which sees a small Maine town overrun by otherworldly monsters.
Considering the vast array of the author’s previously unadapted material, an obvious question arises. Why reimagine Carrie in 2026? Noting the timeless nature of the content, Flanagan expressed his desire to bring the story of a bullied girl into modern times, mirroring his approach to Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House and Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher. He explained, “The only way to approach it was to build something new out of the ingredients of Carrie. Otherwise, there’s really no purpose in trying to retread ground that’s been so beautifully walked before.”
His miniseries will maintain the novel’s bloody bookends while delivering “big surprises” along the way.
A New Prom Night Nightmare
The roughly 60-second teaser introduces Summer H. Howell as Carrie White just before the moment of catastrophe. Standing in a prom dress, she smiles at her applauding classmates with an ominous crown perched upon her head. Moments later, Carrie unleashes a rage-filled scream into the night air while promgoers rush for the exit doors. But careful examination of this scene shows Carrie wearing a different, albeit dirty dress as she seems to telekinetically punish her peers.
In an exclusive first look with Entertainment Weekly, Flanagan explains that in his version of the story, “the events of that prom are going to be completely different.” An open trunk emitting a crimson glow does hint at the pig’s blood dumped on Carrie’s head, but it’s likely Flanagan’s formal dance will be a different kind of horror altogether. Despite these changes, the series may end with the widespread destruction outlined in the source material. Unlike any previous adaptations, King’s novel ends with the near-total destruction of Chamberlain, Maine. A flaming street in Flanagan’s trailer promises similar carnage no matter what prank sparks Carrie’s deadly revenge.
The Monstrous Addition of Social Media
On the opposite end of this fiery conclusion is an extreme act of bullying that brings together the story’s main cast. King’s novel begins as Carrie gets her first period while showering in the girls’ locker room. Completely unaware of the concept of menstruation, the sheltered girl thinks she’s bleeding to death. Her classmates respond with vitriolic rage. Led by ultra-mean girl Chris Hargensen (Alison Thornton), they mock the terrified teen while pelting her with tampons. Glimpses of this disturbing event reveal that Flanagan has excised the scene’s nudity while adding a seismic update. As Carrie sobs in the shower stall, Chris and her friends film the breakdown with their phones.
Other scenes note the presence of social media, bringing King’s fifty-year-old story into the digital age.
Flanagan’s adaptation promises to explore the destructive power of social media, an often invisible entity with a potential for harm rivaling Carrie’s own powers. While King’s tormented heroine suffers in front of a small group of girls, Flanagan’s version of the incident will likely become a viral video, potentially circling the globe on social media. Similar to Katt Shea’s criminally underrated The Rage: Carrie 2, which includes elements of revenge porn exploitation, Flanagan’s modern retelling will distinguish itself by exploring the nebulous cruelty of online bullying, a force ten times more powerful than the irl pranks King first envisioned.
A Completely Reimagined White Family
In addition to modernizing these canon events, Flanagan hints at updates to Carrie’s oppressive upbringing at the hands of her mother, Margaret White (Samantha Sloyan). Dead before the novel begins, we never meet Carrie’s domineering father Ralph, known to carry a bible alongside his gun. Flanagan’s White household will be an altogether different beast. In his version of the story, Carrie and her mother have been hidden away in the unassuming home, forced out of hiding by Ralph’s unexpected death. Perhaps we will finally meet this elusive man whose shadow hangs over his wife and child. Considering the White family’s fundamentalist lifestyle, this reimagining hints at tradwife culture and a home ruled by staunch patriarchal control.
Whereas King’s Carrie has been tormented by her classmates since Kindergarten, Flanagan’s Carrie will be a wide-eyed newcomer to public school, eager to make friends and engage with her peers. We glimpse Carrie cozying up to Chris and the equally popular Sue Snell (Siena Agudong) as she navigates a new social scene. Of course, we know this kindness is part of an elaborate plot designed to lull Carrie into a false sense of camaraderie, setting up an atrocious act of public humiliation. These brief moments of feigned compassion put Sue’s own complicity into question. Will Flanagan’s version of the character find the courage to defend Carrie from vicious bullies or will she succumb to peer pressure and join in the mob mentality?
Perhaps the biggest deviation from King’s original text is the relationship between Carrie and her mother. King’s Margaret White is a horrifically abusive religious zealot whose worldview has been hardened by internalized misogyny. She shames Carrie for menstruating, locks her in a closet to “pray,” and regrets not killing her child in infancy. She’s also responsible for Carrie’s social ostracization. Known to berate her neighbors for their “sins,” Margaret forces her daughter to live by an extreme code of conduct and disallows any potential friends lest they corrupt the girl with their worldly ways.
Flanagan’s version of the character is perhaps just as much a victim as Carrie herself. Also trapped inside her home, his Margaret is overly vigilant, her own trauma manifesting as strict control. Describing a more sympathetic depiction of the iconic villain, Flanagan explains, “Our Margaret White is a woman who fiercely loves her daughter and wants to protect her from this world … [She] doesn’t know how to do that and thinks the way to protect her is to close her off; not punitively, but to create this private utopia.”
Despite this potential softening, Sloyan’s Margaret may still have a sharp edge. Though she has appeared in many Flanagan projects, from Hush (2016) to The Fall of the House of Usher (2023), she is best known for her role as the abhorrent Bev Keane in the poignant saga Midnight Mass (2021). Perhaps inspired by King’s Margaret White, Bev is pious and sadistic, willing to punish anyone who does not adhere to her warped approximation of Catholicism.
Flanagan specifically wrote Margaret with Sloyan in mind, likely remembering the actress’s eerie ability to create deceptive empathy and shift our allegiances on a dime.
Expanding Stephen King’s Telekinetic Universe
While most of King’s story deals with an unthinkable prom night in Chamberlain, Maine, large sections of the semi-epistolary novel see experts debating the nature of telekinesis. Do Carrie’s frightening abilities represent a new phase in human evolution or is the prom night carnage merely a fluke? King settles the debate with a shocking denouement in which a young mother recounts her infant daughter’s ability to dangle her crib toys in midair. We’re left to wonder if she will become another tormented girl who surprises the world with metaphysical strength.
Flanagan plans to build out this brief scene while amplifying themes of female empowerment. After introducing our main cast of characters, episode two will open with an unrelated story in which we meet another girl with the TK gene. Each subsequent chapter will expand this world, building out a roster of telekinetic young women. Considering King’s fondness for stories about powerful kids, often described as possessing “the shining,” Constant Readers will no doubt have their eyes peeled for various Easter Eggs nodding to the author’s vast catalogue.
Giving Carrie Her Own Voice
Perhaps the most striking distinction in Flanagan’s new trailer is the extent to which we hear Carrie’s voice. The sneak peek is fully narrated by the titular prom queen as she demands accountability. “I want to know why,” she explains while detailing Chris’ elaborate plan. Aside from the aforementioned coda, King’s book essentially ends with the aftermath of the prom night tragedy, leaving little time for Carrie to reflect. His shifting narrative does bring the reader into her fragile mind, though not before she’s been cowed by relentless cruelty. We watch Carrie sink into bloodthirsty revenge, but never hear a considered desire for justice or repair.
Flanagan’s original monologue allows Carrie to voice her pain and mourn the life she could have had. We’re also treated to a mug shot-style photo of Chris with a bruised and bandaged face, implying that the mean girl will have to answer for her senseless sadism.
Flanagan is known for filling his series adaptations with heartwrenching speeches that cut to the heart of his thematic intentions, and this teaser seems to follow suit. After years of fans, critics, and scholars analyzing Carrie’s pain, perhaps his modern retelling will offer the titular anti-hero a chance to finally speak for herself.
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