Carrie Movie Review

“He’s going to laugh at you, they’re all going to laugh at you!” - Margaret White

Carrie is a 1976 horror film based on the first novel by Stephen King.  The movie is directed by Brian DePalma, and stars Sissy Spacek in the titular role of Carrie White, a shy, and extremely introverted high school senior with telekinetic powers.  She is incessantly bullied not only at school, but also by her fanatically religious mother, so when everything finally becomes too much for poor Carrie to take, things go downhill very quickly.

For roughly the first half hour of Carrie, I was asking myself many questions.  “What are the filmmakers trying to communicate here?”  “ Why was this choice made?”  “How does this scene relate at all to the film?”  “Why is everything so tonally inconsistent?”  “In what direction is this film going?”  Nothing was making sense to me, and everything seemed unintentionally funny.  This continued to go on for the whole first act, and early into the second act.  But then things really started to come together, and I found that earlier in the film, I wasn’t letting the movie tell the story it wanted to tell.  

This will occasionally happen to me when watching a film for the first time.  Carrie really taught me to just sit back, be patient, and observe the film for what it is, even if you don’t understand why certain choices are being made.  For that reason, I really appreciate this film.  Do I have some issues with it still?  Of course, and I will discuss those later in this review, but for now, let’s talk about the things that I really liked.

First of all, most of the acting here is great.  Sissy Spacek is amazing as Carrie, and Piper Laurie is just as good as her terrible mother.  John Travolta, Betty Buckley, and William Katt are also pretty impressive.  The dialogue can be pretty cheesy at certain points, but most times, the actors find ways to make it work for their benefit by really playing it up.  The music is mostly great, although there was one scene where it didn’t quite work.  The cinematography is amazing, and creates a sense of buildup and tension, and trust me, this film is loaded with those elements.  The use of split screen during the famous prom sequence is incredibly effective, and manages to add to the chaos and terror of what’s going on in the scene.  

There is a lot of religious symbolism in Carrie that works to great effect.  The way in which the symbolism is presented is done in a clever way, not at all unlike the usage of religious symbols in Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange.  There are many underlying themes in this film dealing with heavy topics such as abuse, blind faith, bullying, and self confidence, or lack thereof.  These themes and ideas are all brought to light in a very subtle manner that you may not pick up on if you aren’t paying close attention.  

As I mentioned before, the whole film is riddled with tension, and the payoff is surprisingly unsettling, and disturbing.  You can see for the whole film that something big is coming, and when it finally hits, boy, does it hit hard.  Another thing that I really loved about Carrie is something that is also present in almost all of Stephen King’s other works, and therefore, the adaptations of his works:  The characters are well realized.  The way that King writes characters, and specifically how he is able to create some of the nastiest, most horrible villains and bullies, is truly second to none.  

Now, I said earlier that there are some flaws in this film.  I’d like to elaborate on those for a bit.  First of all, although the music is generally really great, there are one or two scenes in which the music is incredibly distracting.  The same goes for the editing.  A lot of the editing choices that were made are very bizarre, and seem very dated.  A great example would be the completely unnecessary fast-forward sequence in the tuxedo shop.  Also, I didn’t really care for Nancy Allen’s performance as Carrie White’s enemy, Chris.  

Even with those flaws being taken into account, I still really enjoyed Carrie, and can totally see why it is cemented as an all time horror classic.  There are many things to enjoy about the film, and I suggest giving it a watch if you haven’t before.       

Rating: R

Grade: B+