Editorials
Exploring the Voyeurism in Ti West’s ‘The House of the Devil’
Celebrating its tenth anniversary this year, Ti West’s The House of the Devil remains one of the most memorable and effective horror films in recent memory. He employs a very deliberate pace to set the tone and to slowly build tension over the course of the film. On top of this pacing, he utilizes a very specific brand of voyeurism to bring the audience into the story.
Desperate for money, college student Samantha (Jocelin Donahue) agrees to an unorthodox babysitting job in a remote farmhouse on the eve of a full lunar eclipse. As Samantha settles into her surroundings, she begins exploring the large house. As time goes on, she becomes more and more uneasy. The emptiness of the house feels almost claustrophobic and overwhelming, before it suddenly feels not empty at all. The shadows seem to harbor a presence and unseen eyes watch her from the darkest corners. Eventually, Samantha realizes that nothing about this job is as was promised and she is in the grips of a sinister plot orchestrated a group of very dangerous people.
The film is brilliantly effective in setting up a sense of dread and allowing it to grow slowly as the story progresses. Much of this suspense comes as Samantha slowly explores the house after the Ulmans depart. She travels from room to room, switching on lights, observing the state and decor of the room she enters and investigating anything that may be of interest, before turning the lights off again and moving along. Though she was invited into the house, the invitation did not necessarily extend to her having the run of the place, and thus, her actions carry a slight taboo. Should the Ulmans have returned suddenly, Samantha would no doubt have quickly returned to the living room, pretending to have been there the entire time.
The way in which West includes the audience as a subtle participant in the proceedings is particularly interesting. The House of the Devil carries with it a voyeuristic angle not commonly seen in most horror films. Through the way we see Samantha and the way we watch her observe and interact with the house, the film invites us slightly past a “fly on the wall” status and allows us to be present in the moment. We are exploring the house with her as invisible companions. We are just as curious as she is to find out what lies beyond each door and how her strange employers spend their days, and though we get a sense of fear from the idea that she might get caught (or discover something untold), we also get a bit of a thrill in watching her.
There is a second layer to the illicit observation presented in this film, and that is the audience’s own voyeurism of Samantha’s voyeuristic act. Though we are on this journey with her, we are separated from her. Much like watching Norman Bates peering through his peephole, we are witness to Samantha’s explorations.
In these moments, there exists a physical distance between us and Samantha. We never venture too close, and most of this sequence is filmed at a medium distance, allowing us to see most of Samantha’s figure framed in every shot. The camera maintains a very distinct separation; we aren’t physically with her as much as we are watching her. West incorporates several shots where the camera, already positioned inside of a room, observes Samantha entering that space, rather than following along behind her. We see her in the doorway as she approaches. She turns on a light, looks around briefly, and exits. We see her movements as if we were simply part of the furniture and she has invaded the space that we already occupied. Similarly, she can be seen through several exterior windows. Samantha will pull a curtain aside and we observe her through the glass, as if we were looking in from across the street. We silently watch her movements as she takes a voyeuristic trip around the quiet farmhouse.
This storytelling approach is fascinating because it makes the audience very much a part of the proceedings, but adds in an extra layer of tension by separating us slightly from our protagonist. It makes everything feel slightly unsafe. We feel that Samantha is not alone in the house and is being constantly observed by unseen eyes because WE are the unseen eyes. Inasmuch as the Ulmans are close by and are waiting for the right time to strike, we are silently observing Samantha’s every move.
We become increasingly fearful for her as the film goes on, in part because West has kept us at arm’s length the entire time. We know that she has entered dangerous territory, and though we can’t predict her exact fate, we feel helpless to stop it.
The House of the Devil is a masterful film for a number of different reasons, but the layered voyeurism at play is one of the ways it really stands apart from other horror films. Some have complained that the film is slow, but it is this measured approach that really allows the tension to sink in. By making the audience both complicit in and separate from Samantha’s actions while inside the house, West asks us to take a unique place in both the story and in the way we process it.
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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