Even the Sharpest and Most Vicious Revenge Films Can Still Not Feel Like Enough

Rating: 8/10 (26 September 2006)

Carrie is one of Brian De Palma's greatest achievements, because his sequences of suspense are some of the most tense and gripping and teeth-gritting that I've ever seen. I think he spends a little too much time on prolonged, embellished sequences of lush shots of Sissy Spacek's body as well as a few others, but his suspense evens it out.
I just wish Carrie's final breaking point where she uses her telekinesis to slaughter all of those who hazed, humiliated, and devastated her was as prolonged as his almost aggravatingly wanton opening shower scene or the walk through her house near the end, or other scenes of that nature. Why, in a film about vicious unleashing of cold, hellish vengeance and wrath on the meanest possible people who play the meanest prank or con or sham I've ever seen on film does the rising action have to be so overlong and without an at least minimally violent forewarning and why does the pay-off have to be so short and to- the-point?
Really! What's wrong with that scene of almost orgasmic wrath upon the people at the prom being fifteen minutes long, focusing in on each and every person who has in the film specifically picked on her and their brutal deaths? Nancy Allen's gabby friend cracking up at the dousing of the pig's blood simply being hosed down? Why was she not hosed so hard that she was elevated with such force from the house against the wall that she started vomiting blood or dying of suffocation? The snobby, immature teacher who made cruel fun of Carrie's comment in class being electrocuted for, what, six or seven seconds? How about being fried to the point of his skin turning to a crisp? And especially Nancy Allen and John Travolta! The cruelest and most unbelievable vicious characters in the movie just get blown up in their car?! They seriously should have been turned over in their car by Carrie's telekinetic powers, yes, but the car should of just caught aflame, which should've slowly engulfed the car as Carrie uses her mind to crush the car into a smaller, tighter place where there is no escape, so that the two evil people are forced to watch Carrie's saucer-sized eyes of retribution as they slowly burn to death in a cramped space with broken bones? And Carrie's mother should've been crucified with even more knives. Even more, yes. Even one in her eye.
Carrie deserves the cruelest, most inhuman revenge ever heard of up till 1976. Why not?! The whole movie up until her breaking point is about her horrible suffering and being sheltered in a terrible psychologically debilitating way by her mother. The audience deserves more than what they get in the climax. The movie is great, and the revenge is sweet, but if only it could've been a little more.
Whether you like the film itself or not, you should at least admire Pino Donaggio's wonderful score. It's fantastic and works beautifully.