The eighth and final episode of the Mike Flanagan’s new Carrie TV series for Prime Video is titled “AP Physics,” and is written and directed by Flanagan himself. And well, folks, I really thought I knew where this was going when I sat down and pressed play on this episode. But boy was I so wrong, in so many ways. Not only does Flanagan’s Carrie finale buck tradition and make its most sweeping alterations to Stephen King’s source material here in the final stretch, but it is also an unfortunately distinct decline in quality from the prior few episodes.
If you’ve been following along with these reviews across the eight episodes of this series, you’ve been getting my authentic gut reaction to each episode. I very deliberately haven’t watched ahead, jumped around, or gone back to edit earlier stuff; despite the binge-style of release, I have done my absolute damnedest to treat each episode of the series as its own distinct work. To that end, I found there to be some episodes in the middle stretch that were overall quite good, but had some distinctly strange creative choices that I couldn’t quite wrap my head around. Most specifically, this had to do with the character of Carrie herself and the ways in which the show’s expansion of other characters and storylines would often pull focus from her as the center of this story.
I was elated in episodes 6 and 7 (“Home Economics” and “Romantic Literature,” respectively) when it felt like not only were these issues largely curtailed, but the show itself made this a primary point of focus both within and without the narrative. Carrie was repositioned to be the center of Carrie, and the result was the two strongest episodes of the series. Given all of this and the fact that “Romantic Literature” quite literally ends with a cliffhanger to segue directly into this finale, I felt at least somewhat confident that whatever Flanagan and co. had in store, it would feel cut from the same cloth.
So imagine my chagrin to find that all of those issues that I had with the earlier episodes of the series come home to roost several times over in “AP Physics.” This is an absolutely bewildering finale that has some real moments of strength within it, but also has some of the very worst things in the entirety of this series.
Carrie episode 8 review: "AP Physics"
The episode begins by looping back around to the opening prologue of the very first episode, wherein a post-prom night Sue Snell (as played by Siena Agudong) is sitting with a documentary crew of some kind and detailing her memories of the events. For the first time though, the crew is revealed on-camera and we’re treated to a glimpse of their interviews with other characters, such as Tina, as well. It is through the perspective of these characters’ memories, with the larger framing device of them describing these events to the crew, that we’re brought back to Ewen High School’s prom night.
Given how directly the previous episode sets up Carrie’s massacre (it literally cuts to black just as she’s been doused in pig’s blood and is preparing to unleash her powers) this is a strange way to re-enter the story. I’ll give Flanagan the benefit of the doubt here and say that this was at least partially inspired by King’s novel, which follows a similar proto-found footage kind of approach for significant chunks of its run, but if that was the goal here, it’s far too little far too late.
And unfortunately, the strangely dissonant choices certainly do not end there. Once we’re actually back into the meat of the prom night sequence, the entire flow of events is interrupted as Emaline (played by Thalia Dudek) shows back up and essentially offers to possess Carrie and “take the wheel.” The resulting sequence is an incredibly well-staged take on the prom night massacre, with stellar effects work and great character beats to-boot, but it’s all obfuscated by this jarring element of Carrie essentially being totally removed from the action. It’s a strange ‘having its cake and eating it too’ scenario, where the show seems to not want Carrie to be portrayed in an outright villainous light, but still wants to roll out the red carpet for the story’s most signature moments. This bizarre approach is the worst of all possible options, robbing Carrie of her autonomy (a thing that the entire show has ostensibly been attempting to grapple with) and deflating the entire sequence in the process.
This issue persists for a bit, but fortunately, thanks to some convoluted beats, Carrie is wholly herself once again by the time she returns home to her mother Margaret White (as played by the incomparable Samantha Sloyan). This entire sequence in the White home plays things much truer to previous iterations of the story, but not without a bit of Flanagan’s trademark flare, and it is easily the best stretch of the episode. It’s a focused, motivated, and cohesive scene that sees Summer H. Howell and Sloyan coming together, falling apart, and everything in-between. This is so clearly the beating heart of this series (with two phenomenal performers giving their all to these parts) which is part of what makes the rest of the episode's shortcomings so obscenely frustrating.
There are a whole truckload of ideas that get introduced in this finale and few of them that get resolved in any kind of proper way. Instead, the door is left wide open, teasing a spinoff, additional seasons-to-come, or a crossover of some kind. That’s all fine and good, but in leaving everything so open ended, Carrie as a work unto itself lacks any sense of closure. I’m honestly not even opposed to the idea of changing Carrie the character’s ending for her story; it’s been pretty apparent from the beginning that this was something Flanagan and co. were working towards. But the scene which closes this episode out just feels so utterly devoid of anything resembling emotional resonance or catharsis.
Verdict
Carrie as a series had its ebbs and flows in quality, but the largely superior direction, writing, performances, and all-around craft on display had been enough to bolster it, even amidst some head-scratching creative decisions. Unfortunately, “AP Physics” pushes this mentality to its breaking point though, as the massive swings it takes alternate between feeling entirely unearned and outright suffocating the elements of the series that do still work here. The story of Carrietta White often ends in tragedy; and despite the overt narrative changes to shy away from such elements here, Mike Flanagan’s Carrie ends in tragedy just the same.
GRADE: D
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