"Carrie" marked Brian De Palma's breakthrough

Rating: 8/10 (3 August 2008)

It is a classic offbeat horror-melodrama merging harmoniously the family Gothic extravaganza, supernatural power, and a woman's movie of a peculiar kind It remains the cinema's best adaptation of a Stephen King novel
The film initiated De Palma's inclination for surprise diverts between playful imagination and reality, as in the opening, which swifts from a soft-core porn fantasia of girls taking a shower in the locker room to the fact of Carrie's menstruation for the first timethe first sign of "otherness" that will reserve her as an horrifying monster from her small-minded colleagues
All the oppression that Carrie undergoes both at home (with a bible beating maniacal mother played by scary Piper Laurie who develops twisted bizarre ideas) and at school to suppress tension which takes the shape of super telekinetic power, the ability to move objects with the strength of her mind We observe with ambivalence as Carrie's insatiable revenge jumps the line into uncontrolled mass murders ever filmed
Sissy Spacek is amazing as the mocked, helpless girl pushed over the edge Her face and body twist like a living special effect to unleash her pent up rage, as well as her character's alarming progress from painfully shy high-school teenager to Angel of Vengeance