Viking Night: Carrie
By Bruce Hall
November 22, 2011
BoxOfficeProphets.com
I watch movies to be entertained, amused, amazed and on occasion challenged. I don’t mind being disturbed from time to time, but movies are a sanctuary for me. I go there to get away, and there are just some things I don’t want in the room with me. You know, things like watching a pedophile kill a hamster with a cigarette. I can handle twisted concepts as interpreted by my own imagination, but I don’t need to get inside YOUR head, lest I never get out. This is why I don’t read Stephen King’s books. I have before; I just don’t any more. The man is brilliantly talented, which is to say brilliantly insane. Thank God he writes stories, or he might really be killing people. and who’s to say that when he dies, they won’t be finding bodies on his property for years? Maybe most of his novels will turn out to be true stories, or things he was planning to unleash on humanity from his secret underground chamber of horrors.
But what would you expect from the guy who wrote Carrie? It’s not that I don’t like it - in fact I like it a lot. I like both the book, which is effed up, and the movie, which is effed up and on film. With his book, Stephen King crafted a simple story of alienation and cruelty that jumped off the page and into your skull, festering there like a parasite and giving you nightmares for weeks. It’s something he’s good at. And with his movie, Brian De Palma proves he is the peanut butter to King’s chocolate. His gift for making violent images and disturbing concepts leap off the screen, plow through the backs of your eye sockets and lodge themselves into your brain like lawn darts is well documented. So...like I said...what would you expect?
As in the book, the story begins with young Carrie White (Sissy Spacek) in the shower at her high school gym. It is here that the film hit me on the head so hard it made the rest of the story seem creepy by default. The fact that it actually IS creepy just happens to be a bonus. The opening credits appear as De Palma’s camera orbits Spacek like Apollo 8, lovingly photographing and cataloguing every inch of terrain down to the last detail. It’s like a Lexus commercial in its grim, clinical, serial killer-like precision - and it goes on for so long that you (should) start feeling really uncomfortable. And then it occurs to you that while the attractive, naked actress you are seeing IS legal, the character she’s playing is NOT.
Yeah. The “ick” factor goes up to 11 before the seat you’re in even has a chance to get warm. I submit to you that at no point - especially at the beginning - does Carrie feel the need to do anything other than be as macabre as it was possible to be in 1976 and still walk away with an R rating. Mr King, Mr De Palma, I salute you. Also, as in the book, the woman you were just having this disturbing inner monologue about experiences her first...er...”womanly event” there in the shower and loses her mind over it. She has no idea what is happening to her and rather than react with sympathy, her classmates mock her as only other teenage girls can (during this incident a nearby light bulb ominously shatters in parallel to Carrie’s distress).
Poor Carrie isn’t the most popular girl at school as it is. She is a shy and quiet girl who is ostracized by her classmates because of her mousy looks and outdated clothes. Which makes her more shy and quiet. Which makes them hate her more. Reminds you of how much fun it was to be a kid, doesn’t it? Things aren’t much better at home, where Carrie’s mother (Piper Laurie) keeps the child cloistered like a nun. Mother and daughter live together in a Gothic horror show of shuttered windows, dismal furniture and crucifixes as far as the eye can see. Mother never told daughter about the facts of life, including certain monthly functions of her own body. This is (apparently) a dirty, sinful thing, and she’s none too happy about the girl’s blossoming womanhood. She blames Carrie for what’s happened, dinner is cancelled and the poor girl is locked in a closet with a Bible and the spookiest crucifix ever.
During this incident, a nearby mirror inexplicably breaks, and Carrie begins to suspect that she has the gift of telekinesis. By now, so does the audience. It’s the only time in the film the two will be on the same page.
Following a series of events that aren’t really important right now, Carrie ends up invited to the prom, courtesy of a sympathetic classmate who convinces her super hunky boyfriend to ask the stringy haired stray to the big dance. This doesn’t sit well with Carrie’s greatest enemies, Chris (Nancy Allen, channeling Parker Posey) and her dimwitted boyfriend Billy (John Travolta - yes, THAT John Travolta). The two meddling meatheads hatch a plot to avenge themselves upon Carrie and humiliate her in front of the whole class. Like everything else in this movie, their plan is simple, effective, and really effed up. I won’t spoil it of course, except to say that it’s one of the few times in life you’ll ever hear yourself saying “Really? You guys couldn’t have just used corn syrup for that?”
Leading up to this sticky situation, we discover more about Carrie, her powers, their extent, her creepy mother, the only three friends she has on earth and their dopey classmates. Yes, it’s the whole “strange things happening in a small town” thing King is famous for. Yes, it all comes to a head at the prom. Yes, as the tension escalates it becomes completely obvious what’s going to happen (although it’s not nearly as terrible as in the book). And yes, Vinnie Barbarino gets blood on his hands - and there’s more than a little irony in a Sweathog killing a sweaty hog (I know pigs don’t sweat; deal with it). It more or less follows the spirit of the book if not the story itself, diverging in several significant ways. But Carrie is truly a rarity - a good film based on a good book that’s more or less as good as the book. And a lot of it really is horrifying, so that’s a bonus.
Or how about this - it’s a garden variety study in teen angst, through the warped lens of Stephen King’s black, haunted mind. Spacek does fear really well and for much of the movie, Carrie is simply afraid. Eventually she’s...something else, and Spacek does that really well too. Her character seems like a feral creature that’s been penned and beaten for too long - and when she discovers her incredible power, the only thing her battered soul can do is lash out. Remind me not to get piss off Sissy Spacek. Piper Laurie hams it up a bit much for my liking, but she effectively conveys the whole “Mommie Dearest Meets Pat Robertson” idea. That may not sound scary until you see it, and once you do you can’t easily get it out of your head.
I suppose I have to mention Travolta again. He’s in the movie longer than Jack Nicholson is in The Little Shop of Horrors or Johnny Depp was in A Nightmare on Elm Street, but it’s barely worth more than a trivia question. He plays a lanky Guido who uses a lot of double negatives and sort of dances when he walks. It was his strength at the time, so he gets a passing grade. So does Carrie, even though it played a significant role in my early dislike of horror movies that murder animals and treat teenage girls like slabs of meat. Now that I think about it, I just described at least 85% of all horror movies, and one film that includes Martin Sheen torturing a small rodent. Go figure.