Do you like horrors? You have Friday the 13th or Halloween in your mind? Forget all those ketchup-based movies! This one is a real horror. Horror is something that should make you scared, really scared so your hands will tremble and your pulse rate jump to 150. How many chances are that you meet an alien or Freddy Kruger in your basement (or you'll more likely meet a burglar)? Do you think it's King-Carpenter's driverless Christina or Spielberg's ghost truck that is your threat in the street (or is it a drunk kid from the block)? Is a haunted castle or Muldair's alien spacecraft a place that you'll be imprisoned in (or could it be a mental institution due to wrong diagnosis?).
There are real horrors that can happen in your, mine, anybody's life, but they don't seem to be attractive to movie makers. It was a real life story that inspired the authors, otherwise we probably still wouldn't see such a movie. And the horror is one of the most threatening: false accusation for child abuse. You can compare it only to anticommunists accusations beyond Iron curtain in 50's, suspected witches centuries ago, and maybe (but just maybe) fetvas in Islamic countries.
There are three steps to horror (so you'll never see heaven). First, suspicion. Few days you can think it's a nightmare, your friends and family think it's a mistake; but you won't wake up and all the others will become cautious. Second step, punishment. You are abandoned by everyone during trial, some of them will join those who prosecute you either because they believe you are guilty or because they have some interest; while in jail you are on the bottom of survival ladder with no one to protect you. Third step, nothingness. If ever you leave the jail alive, no one will want to meet you or confirm they ever knew you, afraid because people might think they are the same like you if seen with you; you will be a ghost, and sometimes even happy if someone doesn't decide you are a free prey for hunting and shooting.
I don't believe Jen and Carrie ever found a true happy-end in reality. Once hearing such an accusation people always tend to avoid these persons, either in doubt about their guilt (just couldn't be proved) or for being afraid they're under surveillance. Once suspects for being witches / anticommunists / molesters people terminate their normal social life for good.
"I've never thought something like this could happen in America" said Carrie. In fact, I don't know it could happen anywhere else. Such a banal cause, such intense hatred by individuals and mass hysteria following them... I can't imagine it in any other place.
The movie makes people think, but that's the best one can say about it. As often in TV movies made from a real story we have one person in the middle, and we never find what was Collins' motif - personal experience, religious fanaticism, building career, following society streams? We don't know much about Carrie either - what kind of photographs was she famous for? Jennifer is pale as a character. If it was made on purpose, if it was supposed to show how Jennifer was lost in these absurd circumstances, Mare Winningham didn't show it. In fact it was her (and being a big fan of her I watched this movie only after seeing her name in cast) worst role I've ever seen. It would be better if she repeated her acting in "Intruders".
