Rather perfectly, last night Carrie teamed up with Firestarter to deliver a vegeful night fueled by fire. A quick review of Firestarter would be that it is Drew Barrymore's best acting since E.T. They could have cut the very last scene, though. Made it way too cheesy for my liking. And onto better things.
Year: 1976
Synopsis: A young, abused and timid 17-year-old girl discovers she has telekinesis, and gets pushed to the limit on the night of her school's prom by a humiliating prank.
Tagline: If you've got a taste for terror ... take Carrie to the prom.
Boy, has Brian De Palma done a lot of noteworthy movies. While I would love to say when I think about him his legendary roll call springs to mind, like Carlito's Way and Scarface, unfortunately all I think about is Dressed to Kill and Phantom of the Paradise. And Carrie.
It's hard to forget about Carrie.
Perhaps I am bias because the novel by Stephen King was one of my most favourites when I was a ten year old kid. Still, I find very few flaws with De Palma's Carrie. In one breath, it is staggeringly heartbreaking and, in another, creepy as can be. There is a youthful innocence that simply radiates off Sissy Spacek. You believe her to be this young naive creature who knows nothing about the world. Stunted by an overly religious mother, who happens to have a severe case of dementedness, Carrie is screwed up from the word go.
Timid and unsure, Carrie exists in an environment where she basically skates through without much notice. Other than being the weird girl. Or so is the impression you get as a viewer. It's only with her untimely first period that she is thrust out from the shadow of invisibility and brought into the limelight. Bullying has always existed and, as the girls pelt Carrie with pads and tampons and shout 'plug it up', all you feel is an immense sense of embarrassment and pity for the poor girl. Ten minutes in and De Palma has managed to bring to life a character you feel nothing but sympathy for.
Then, when you meet her mom, it all becomes clear. The whole movie, as Carrie rebels against her mother, you want her to be contented. To experience a normal moment. A little happiness. But with the taunt of 'they're all going to laugh of you' ringing loud and clear, you get the sense that this is a very obvious case of foreshadowing. All hope is smashed apart in the last fifteen minutes of the movie.
In a lot of ways, Carrie isn't exactly 'horror', but more a coming of age teen flick that just so happens to have a very bad outcome.
And what about Sue Snell. The girl gets caught up in the moment, tosses some tampons and ends up losing her boyfriend and all her friends because of it. When I say 'losing' I mean having them burnt up in a fire and buried in the ground because they are dead. Her nice deed went completely unnoticed. Well, that's unfortunate. Especially when she might have been able to derail the whole pigs' blood incident.
Honestly, this is one of my favourite horror movies. It delivers. And Sissy Spacek just did an astounding job at breathing life into Carrie.
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