Definitely a mixed bag

Rating: 6/10 (31 January 2007)

Someone here said this is in fact a monster movie, about the monster inside us all. I will second that, but it's really a movie about psychological torment.
This is a movie that starts out well--despite being rather distasteful in the opening sequence--and builds from there. However, there are so many plot holes and illogical developments that the film never really holds together well.
Is it scathing satire or is it not? The film pulls us in two directions. It's sweet when Carrie likes the poem in class, yet the instructor who mocks her acts like he's in a goofy commercial. Characters bounce between doing serious things and comical things. What's with the Baby Elephant Walk music during the girls' punishment, and the fast motion tuxedo gag? Betty Buckley's performance is the best in the bunch. There is something interesting about her being both angry at the girls for committing such a heinous act towards Carrie while at the same time being irritated that Carrie won't apparently even try to help herself. However, did we need the extra touch of Carrie's menstrual blood on her shorts as she paces the Principal's office and discusses the situation with him? The major over the top piece is with Carrie's mother. The woman has no compassion, and it's hard to believe that she would go so far as to kill her own daughter. I didn't buy it, and I thought it was a cheap way to make the viewer hate the mother. How much more convincing and interesting it would have been if the mother was at least something more than a two dimensional cardboard religious nut case stereotype.
Further, her madness and religious extremism portrayed here comes quite close to Christian-bashing. Why are the Christ figures in her home purposely scary looking? When Carrie's mom is killed, is it supposed to be funny or is it just more bashing when the flying knives eventually do her in and cause her to form a position as if she was crucified on a cross? Or how about the church organ music when Carrie goes home after the school burns down? There are other problems here. How on earth could dozens of kids decorating the gym just completely miss a huge bucket of blood in the rafters with a big rope on it, for what, days on end as the work continues? How did Tommy get killed, or even knocked out, by an empty tin bucket? Why did Carrie imagine seeing her gym teacher laughing at her? (It might have worked better, if the filmmakers wanted you to believe that it was all in her head, to show the laughing from her point of view and then cut to the schoolmates and teachers looks of horror in reality) What exactly was burning in a primarily an open gym? Why did Carrie's house fold in on her, she herself was not making that happen.
For me, the jaggedness of the movie will always keep it from being a really good movie, aside from moments that are in fact very well done.