Editorials
The Queer Horror of ‘Chucky’: Episode 4 – “Just Let Go”
Each week Joe Lipsett will highlight a key scene or interaction in Don Mancini’s Chucky series to consider how the show is engaging with and contributing to queer horror.
This is the first week of my Chucky coverage that I’ve been jealous of Meagan’s reviews because the hospital horror scenes in “Just Let Go” are pretty darn exciting. But while melty-faced Chucky (Brad Dourif) double-fisting syringes into Detective Peyton (Travis Milne)’s chest to the point that his fingers bleed is highly entertaining, for our purposes, the queer horror narrative is still the one unfolding in the flashbacks.
Thanks to Devon (Bjorgvin Arnarson)’s research, the next chapter of Charles Lee Ray’s childhood is revealed. After the death of his parents, Charles was sent to a boys home where he stayed out of trouble for a few years. Then, as a fourteen year old (now played by Tyler Barish), Charles embarks on a mission of not just revenge, but also “mentorship.”
Obviously the big reveal is that Charles’ connection with a young boy at the group home is revealed to be none other than Eddie Caputo (played by Neil Giuntoli in the 1988 film). While Eddie winds up being Chucky’s accomplice and eventual murder victim in the 80s, here he’s simply a boy who shares Charles’ interest in the macabre, to the point that he willingly accepts the severed forearm of the murdered Janitor (Michael Scholar Jr) in a shoebox.
One interpretation of this development is through the lens of courtship: Chucky is wooing Eddie into a future life of crime. But there’s barely enough material here to justify that reading (perhaps we’ll see more of Eddie in the future?)
Let’s focus instead of the cultivation of homosocial relationships that Charles/Chucky covets. While in the present he’s just as interested in young Caroline (Carina Battrick) as he is in Jake (Zackary Arthur), it’s telling how easily Chucky assumes control of the all-boy troop at the group home. We see him not only commandeering story time and teaching the boys foul language, he takes them on an “adventure” into the woods to see the Janitor’s body.
The fact that Charles was reading the group Peter Pan is significant in this regard: the story is about an emotionally stunted, immature boy who collects young, impressionable boys in a make-believe world where he never has to grow up.
Thematically the choice of Peter Pan makes sense because Chucky’s world is make-believe. For Chucky, sweet talking Jake is all it will take to convince the boy to drop Lexy (Alyvia Alyn Lind) to her death. Hell, Chucky’s moral code is such that Detective Peyton’s voracious appetite merits stabbing him to death, or that Oliver deserved to die last episode because Chucky mistook him for someone else! Let’s face it: Chucky’s point of view is infantile, so Peter Pan is a perfect fit for him.
Coincidentally this isn’t the first time a Peter Pan narrative has been linked to queerness. Due to the character’s age and size, he was routinely played by a girl on-stage and according to The Atlantic, Peter is:
Eternally young; endlessly seeking adventure; brazenly living a fraught, fantastical life without grown-up interference or societal constriction—Peter Pan is the perfect character through whom society’s gender roles may be disrupted, and even abandoned. He’s more interested in killing pirates than kissing girls… Rascally and clever and devil-may-care, Peter will never reach manhood; he doesn’t want to achieve manhood.
Sound like anyone we know? Sure Chucky’s relationship with Jennifer Tilly’s Tiffany contradicts some of this, but the reality is that he’s always seemed more attracted to her murderous impulses than her physicality.
Of course the trip through the woods to see a dead body is also evocative of the homosocial world of Stephen King’s The Body (or Frank Darabont’s adaptation, Stand By Me), which positions a memorable adventure as a loss of innocence among a group of young male friends. And while this would apply more to Eddie than Charles in these flashbacks, this is a rite of passage and a new turning point for Charles: the moment he murders for himself.
Between the recent discussion about mentorship and grooming, the homosocial ties to The Body and the queer undertones of Peter Pan, it’s clear that Chucky has “a type”. The question is whether Mancini and his writers will continue to explore Charles’ childhood experiences, or whether the narrative will focus more on the present day now that Chucky has made his presence known to both Lexy and Devon.
Chucky airs Tuesdays on Syfy and USA Network. Also: Tune into this week’s Horror Queers for a punk interpretation of Peter Pan in queer director Joel Schumacher’s The Lost Boys.
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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