Viewed in
2012
Formats
HDTV
Premise
Sissy Spacek stars as a bullied telekinetic high school girl, who doesn't realize she's about to be pranked at her prom. Based on Stephen King's novel.
Loved
Spacek's performance.
Liked
Relatable teenage angst themes, 1970's style, strong characters.
Hated
Occasional annoying camerawork.
Thoughts
It reminded me The Exorcist, in the sense that it tried to be more than just a frightening gore fest.
Overall, the characters were interesting, complex, and grounded in realism. Spacek was very sympathetic as the ostracized and confused teenager. Many of the themes of bullying, teenage angst and backlash, and sexual repression still resonate deeply in today's world. So while it took a while for blood and guts to actually happen, I was rarely bored, simply because I was tuned into Carrie's painful world. But when it finally came to the carnage, Spacek turned up the crazy. Her "don't f*ck with Carrie" face belonged in the pantheon of cinematic badass moments.
The rest of the cast was very good too. Even though her character was too over-the-top, Piper Laurie was very frightening as Carrie's crazed mother. I also enjoyed Amy Irving's performance as one of the classmates who felt remorse. Lastly, why didn't anyone tell me John freaking Travolta was in this?!
For lack of better description, this was shot in the 1970's, and it definitely felt like it was shot in the 1970's. Lenses smeared in petroleum jelly, jerky camera movements, crazy extreme closeups, blatant symbolisms and music cues, suspect audio quality, and artsy-fartsy camera angles were all present in this film.
One of the cheesiest moments was when the scene actually fast-forwarded just so it could get to the next line faster. Apparently, jump cuts were too trippy. Another unexpected aspect was the sheer amount of nudity. Despite the artistic cinematography, it still felt a tad sensationalistic to be showing so much boobage and vegetation in a serious horror flick.
In general, director Brian De Palma's style accentuated the film. I really dug his slow-motion shots, they really helped build the tension in the right spots. But there were times where it got in the way. Like there was an elongated crane shot that covered various parts of the prom, but when it ends up on Carrie and her date, it's still wide and kind of out of focus, when that moment of the two really needed to be something closer and intimate. Then there's the annoyingly dizzying one take of them spinning one way and the camera encircling them the other direction. And it just. Won't. Stop.
What's funny is that I'm not a horror fan, yet, I was a slightly disappointed by the underwhelming (and tame) amount of carnage in the last act. I've never read the novel, but I'm aware that large chunks of the last act were omitted in the film adaptation, probably due to budget reasons. But the result was a rushed ending that also took away more opportunity for Carrie to kill more people.
Carrie definitely appealed more to my inner film buff than my inner horror fan. It had a great old school vibe, and was full of strong ideas and characters. I couldn't help but still find numerous haunting parallels to today's teenagers dealing with cyber-bullying, sexual confusion, and lashing out through violence.
