A Strange movie

Rating: 8/10 (30 October 2010)

I have found this to be a strange work. Although usually described as a 'horror' movie I think that, if anything, it questions the nature of horror.
Carrie is a pubescent schoolgirl. She is gauche, freckled, withdrawn, but she is the ugly-duckling that is destined to be a swan. Every school has its schmuck, and Carrie fits the role here. During school hours she begins menstruating and is hysterical about the seemingly inexplicable mess. Her mother has never explained. Naturally; all her classmates have had a sex-education and regard her behaviour as hilarious. Young kids are depicted as nasty, insensitive, bullying bigots, which a lot of kids are - though not all. A sympathetic teacher takes her aside. To be alone, the butt of everyone's ill-humours in a closed institution like a school is itself some kind of horror story. But there's more.
Carrie lives with her mother. The woman is, frankly, unhinged. She is stricken by some gross interpretations of old-testament guilt and damnation and has inculcated with only limited success, her poor daughter into her bizarre belief. She lives an isolated life, as does Carrie socially. But the daughter must attend school and discovers there that although people can be terribly cruel, they are not necessarily tainted with evil. It's a horror-story upbringing. Yet it doesn't end there.
Carrie possesses a unique gift of telekinesis. She is at first slow to discover this, but soon realises that she can accomplish great things. The high-school proms are due, and another girl, a favoured beauty, takes pity on Carrie and persuades her hunky handsome boyfriend to invite this gauche misfit as his partner instead. Her mother scorns such debauchery, but Carrie means to go and makes her own dress. On the appointed evening, Sissy Spacek looks absolutely perfect as the ravishing naivete and innocent beauty. Even the hunk realises that he could have done a lot worse. But another girl, embittered, plans a monstrous booby-trap to ruin her evening and triumph. And it works.
Everyone at the high-school roars with laughter and behaves exactly as her mother foretold. Carrie responds with such a telekinetic tantrum that results in the slaughter of pupils, teachers and parents alike.
She walks home afterwards, only to be murdered by her mother, who has finally slipped over the edge.
To me, the real horror of this movie is not slaughter, but cruelty, and meanness, and the wretchedly brief and unfulfilling life that is Carrie's. She is doomed at every turn and I am grief-stricken on her behalf. I actually cheered her on as she systematically electrocuted her tormentors and burned their edifice to the ground. How different it all could have been.
I also thought the ending was unsatisfactory. The mean language on the tombstone and the hand reaching out from the ground still seemed to smack of an indictment of Carrie and her strangeness, when the real indictment was one of human intolerance.
This is a very well-crafted work in all technical aspects. The players give believable turns with Sissy Spacek quite enthralling as a young girl doomed by a terribly troubled upbringing and a unique gift. It's a riveting watch, but saddening for all that.