A DARK CINDERELLA STORY

Rating: Null/10 (3 May 2002)

WARNING: This review contains spoilers!
They shouldn't have teased her.
They shouldn't have tormented her.
They should have left her alone and begged her forgiveness.
But now it's too late and they all must pay.
Carrie White (Sissy Spacek) is a shy little teenage girl who wears her hair long, mostly to hide her face, and doesn't have any friends. According to her peers, she's a Plain Jane Nobody who can't even hit the volleyball right in gym class. What they don't know about her, of course, is that she's telekinetic.
While Carrie is harassed at school, she has an even worse home life. Her stern, wild-haired religious fanatic of a mother forces her twisted brand of piousness upon Carrie, not allowing her to engage in the "sinfulness" of dating and making her pray for her "sins" daily. Momma doesn't even tell Carrie about the facts of life or the changes her body will undergo during puberty.
In fact, Carrie's telekinesis seems to have been triggered by the stress of not knowing what was happening to her when she was visited by her first menstrual period, experienced in innocence in the shower room of the high school gym. Thinking she's bleeding to death, Carrie flings herself into the throng of already-dressed girls, pleading for help. "Wanna tampon, Carrie?" sneers Chris Hargensen, the beautiful Popular Girl with the perfect blonde hairdo, makeup and figure. The other girls laugh and Carrie cowers in the shower stall as she is bombarded with sanitary napkins. "Plug it up! Plug it up!" chant the other girls, continuing to toss and throw and giggle. Finally Miss Collins, the gym teacher, rushes into the locker room to see what all the commotion is about.
All the girls--except Carrie of course--are given one week's detention as punishment for their prank. Penalty for skipping detention: refusal of their prom tickets.
Fed up with detention, Chris Hargensen marches off--and is barred from attending the prom. Enraged, she decides to get her revenge, with the help of her thuggish boyfriend, Billy Nolan. "Billy, Billy...ohhh, Billy, I just HATE Carrie White!"
At home, to some eerily tinkling background music, Carrie drifts down the stairs to Momma, who proclaims: "You're a woman now." Momma's punishment for Carrie's "sinful" menstruation: locking the poor girl, kicking and screaming, inside a candlelit closet to pray for atonement all night before a statue of a crucified Jesus.
Meanwhile, another girl--Sue Snell--feeling guilty for participating in the shower room prank, coerces her boyfriend Tommy Ross, the most popular guy in the entire school, to ask Carrie out to the prom. Carrie eventually accepts, against Momma's wishes; Momma mumbles prayers while Carrie makes her prom dress.
When Tommy actually takes Carrie to the prom, he discovers that the ugly duckling has become a beautiful swan: her mouth aglow with shimmery pink lipstick, her once-lank long hair turned back in a curl, her body clad in a silken white sheath, Carrie is breathtaking and we can feel her joy as she dances with Tommy, the lights growing brighter and brighter as the two of them twirl round and round, giving a feeling of bliss spinning out of control.
Sue Snell, the Good Samaritan, has managed to sneak into the prom and hides behind the King and Queen thrones to watch Carrie's enchantment, growing ever more wondrous and happy when she sees that Tommy and Carrie have been voted King and Queen of the prom. Sue notices a cord running up over the thrones, snaking up to a metal bucket of something perched on the beam overhanging the precise spot where the Queen will be standing. She traces the other end to the crawlspace beneath where, silhouetted behind a crepe paper curtain, a hand eagerly holds the rope.
What happens next is too terrible to mention and is best left to the imagination. But that bucket above is the key to a fiery horror from which no one escapes--not even Chris Hargensen, who orchestrated the evil affair. Only Sue manages to survive. And at Carrie's home, Momma has turned the place into a candlelit church and is lurking menacingly in the shadows with vengeance on her mind.
CARRIE is a very good movie--sad, terrifying, and extremely fast-paced. After watching it, one comes away as if he or she has been through an emotional wringer--and all because of a sad little teenage girl who could make objects move with the sheer force of her mind.