Piper Laurie as Margaret White in Carrie (1976)

By Christopher Wesley Moore

It’s no secret that the horror genre never gets its due when awards season comes around. To this day, perfectly excellent horror films and performances are overlooked in favor of your usual, middlebrow “important” work.  Ask just about any self-respecting gay horror fan about Toni Collette not being nominated for her stellar work in Hereditary and be prepared to hear a 15 minute (at least) “she was robbed” speech with a few uncannily accurate impressions from her “I am your mother” monologue.

Seriously. Give it a try. It’s a blast! I highly recommend it.

To many, horror is still seen as a tacky and childish genre that caters to the lowest common denominator and features scripts and performances not even worthy of Razzies. When non-horror fans think horror, they think screaming teenagers (usually played by people pushing or well-over 30) wearing very little clothing as they’re either murdered by or running away from some gooey creature or a masked maniac with a sharp gardening tool of some sort. They’re laughed at and not treated seriously.

I get it. It’s very hard to give a great performance in a horror film, especially if the material isn’t there. Even Meryl Streep isn’t going to make something moving and transformative out of “Camper in Sleeping Bag Jason Hits Up Against A Tree #3.” Not that I wouldn’t love to see her try. However, when you get a well-written part and just the right actor to play said part, the fireworks can be out of this world and you’re suddenly reminded of just how powerful a horror film performance can be.

The first performance that came to mind when I was thinking up this series was Piper Laurie in Carrie. It’s my favorite film of all time and one of my favorite performances from any genre, but I wondered why. After all, Margaret White is simply an excellent character created by Stephen King in the middle of a relatable and moving story that has also been portrayed by actresses as brilliant as Patricia Clarkson and Julianne Moore. I’d hardly call them slouches in the acting department, so why does Laurie’s Margaret both move and terrify me so much more than any of the other versions, and what is it that makes her performance so great?

Laurie’s Margaret White isn’t the dreary, prim-and-proper spinster with her hair pulled back in a severe hairstyle we usually associate with cinematic (or many real-life) religious fanatics. She lets her fiery mane of red hair flow free like a lioness and wears long, billowy capes and dresses. She’s appropriately humorless, but not without joy or a smile every now and then. The scary part is that you don’t know if she’s smiling because she’s actually happy about something or because she’s about to stab you in the back.

Seriously. Watch out. She kinda has a habit of doing that.

Her first entrance in the film comes around 10 minutes into the story where she’s going door-to-door in the neighborhood trying to spread “the gospel of God’s salvation through Christ’s blood.” When a buzzed Mrs. Snell (Priscilla Pointer) takes a break from her afternoon soaps and lets Margaret in, she’s not met with immediate judgment or harshness. In fact, Laurie’s Margaret seems jovial. Quirky, but not too frightening unless you’ve had a lot of experience with this type and know what could be bubbling beneath the surface.

She’s more charismatic TV evangelist, than a fire and brimstone preacher.  She’s sort of entertaining in a “people of Wal-Mart” way. It’s only when Mrs. Snell cuts Margaret off mid-sermon to contribute five (oops) ten dollars that Laurie allows Margaret’s true nature to be seen. She shuts off and turns ice-cold, not even offering so much as a gracious “thank you” for Mrs. Snell’s donation before twirling out the room with a flick of her cape (the cape, y’all! The cape is everything.) This is only a hint of the darker things to come.

After Margaret arrives home, she receives the call from the school that her teenage daughter, Carrie (Sissy Spacek), has been sent home for having her first period in the girl’s locker room and freaking the fuck out, because she actually thought she was dying.

Guess that Margaret isn’t exactly the world’s most progressive mother.

As Carrie comes downstairs, Margaret doesn’t offer a warm hug and a tearful apology for not teaching her the ins and outs of womanhood. Instead, she immediately charges at her, Bible in hand, and whacks her over the head with it, sending the hysterical girl to the floor in tears. It’s this random outburst of shocking violence that keeps both Carrie and the audience walking on eggshells for the rest of the film. This is a woman who can snap at any minute and she’s not to be messed with. She’s the type who you totally believe can drag a teenage girl into a closet without breaking a sweat.

Not content to play a one-note villain, Laurie also shows traces of warmth and tenderness in select moments. After Carrie is let out of her prayer closet of terror to repent for the sin of simply becoming a woman, mother and daughter share a touching “good night” and you can see that there is love between them. They both need each other in their own ways and Margaret is terrified of the day when Carrie discovers that she might be better off without her domineering mother. Without this moment, the story doesn’t work and it’s played beautifully by Laurie.

After this, Laurie essentially disappears from the film entirely for the next 25 minutes or so, which really speaks of her performance’s power that she’s not in as much of the film as you’d think, and yet it feels like she hasn’t left the screen for a frame.

She doesn’t show back up until the dramatic midpoint of the film where Carrie tells Margaret that not only has she been invited to prom, but she plans on attending as well. In this scene, Laurie makes a three-act play out of the word “prom” and tries to warn her daughter of the dangers of what happens to girls who go out with boys. We can tell this is partly the jealous manipulation tactic of a lost little girl scared of being abandoned and the desperate plea to keep her daughter safe and not have her get hurt the way she was.

It’s also the scene that Laurie is afforded a little vulnerability when Carrie finally displays her dangerous telekinetic powers and tells her mother that “things are gonna change around here.” Laurie makes sure we know Margaret gets that message loud and clear and that her daughter might, in fact, be God’s punishment on her for her past sins. She can no longer protect her daughter from “the curse” and she can’t simply lock her in a closet anymore and pray it away.

Laurie also isn’t afraid to bravely embrace the inherent camp of the role. Instead of underplaying certain lines that could run the risk of sounding silly (and who can sound 100% serious saying dialogue as delicious as “I can see your dirty pillows?”), she fully commits and gives them a manic intensity that teeters on the edge between disturbing and darkly comic. Her attempts to guilt Carrie into not attending the prom by slapping herself, pulling her hair, and scratching her face might either be hilarious or terrifying depending on who’s watching.

Laurie’s Margaret is a woman who has reached the end of her rope and all of her worst nightmares are about to come true and she’ll try anything to keep her child at home. She’s not going to take that lightly and tastefully. As she’s left alone on the bed as Carrie defies her and goes off to the prom anyway, you can’t help but feel a little bit of pity for her.

It’s this last act when Laurie really shines with a series of strange, unconventional choices after Margaret decides the only way to save her daughter is to kill her. From her breathy monologue about how Carrie was conceived to the ecstatic smile on her face after she’s stabbed Carrie with a kitchen knife and is following her throughout the house, trying to “give her to God”, Laurie seems determined to give the audience a rousing finale. Laurie said she chose to play this scene as if this was the greatest thing that could happen to her daughter, like a graduation or something. It makes everything all the more unsettling and is a sharp choice by an actor at the top of their game.

But the real showstopper is Laurie’s death scene where she’s impaled by just about all the sharp kitchen implements in the house and crucified to the doorway. Instead of dribbling out a little fake blood, rolling back her eyes, and expiring in 3 seconds like just about every other dying person on film, she extends the moment into something unique and memorable. Margaret’s cries of pain soon turn into orgasmic moans as Laurie writhes and hollers, rolling her eyes back and forth as if she’s Angie Dickinson in the back of that cab in Dressed to Kill (another De Palma film). And why not? She’s going to see her maker. This is the moment she’s been waiting for. It should be happy for her. Disturbing for us, but thrilling for her.

It’s the manic joy that Laurie brings to the role that makes it so creepy and pulls you in, not allowing you to look away. It’ll never be confused for being a subtle performance, but a lot of these types in real life aren’t exactly paragons of restraint themselves.

Have y’all seen Jesus Camp? Yikes!

Laurie’s is a brave performance full of humor, pathos, and even some surprising sensuality. When the Oscars came around, she was rightly nominated for her performance which is still a rarity for horror films. Even the Academy couldn’t ignore the fine work she’d done and the performance has stood the test of time, still making people uncomfortable to this day. If that’s not the mark of a great performance, I don’t know what is.

Now, go eat your apple cake.