Bloody good

Rating: 9/10 (23 July 2017)

Quick – picture the scariest, most blood-curdling thing in the world. Don't think – just picture it. An image; a moment; a feeling of such utter mortification, disgust, and soul-chilling repulsion, even tangentially picturing it makes your skin clammy and fills you with dread. Have it? Good. Now, let's compare notes. I'll hazard a guess: it's not vampires, zombies, or ghosts. It's not clowns, axe-murders, or murderous children. It's not falling, being trapped underwater, or in a tight space.
It's high school.
Yes, it's a profound enough realization to catapult Stephen King from up-and- coming novelist to genre titan, pioneering decades of audiences realizing the true horror was not elaborate fantasies on screen – it lay in the people surrounding them in day-to-day existence, and just how perverse, vindictive, and creatively cruel they could be. And it's a guiding principle that helps Brian De Palma's seminal adaptation of King's fledgling classic persist as more than a schlocky '70s thriller, landing in The Exorcist camp of one of the most deeply disturbing but perversely, sheepishly enjoyable cinematic frights of all time. And that's not even factoring in the blood-drenched mass-murder by telekinesis.
De Palma, a director largely acclaimed for style at the expense of substance, here finds the ideal wedding of the two, recognizing that King's parable is all the more gruesomely effective when seen through the heightened, hormonal dizziness of high school. At first glance, we're given the sense he's somewhat sold himself short, as the cheerfully gratuitous credits, featuring a gaggle of spectacularly naked coeds bouncing around a change room, suggest a jocular resignation to the comic book camp of B-horror (B for beeeeewwwbbs, naturally). A subsequent shot of Carrie ambiguously pleasuring herself in the shower, pelted by a playfully ejaculating shower head, is straight out of a porn parody. But then: a spurt of blood, and the shower's gone ice cold, as we're plunged into one of the most chilling openings to a horror film imaginable, as Carrie's histrionics, blindsided by her first period, are trumped by the scarring spectacle of her being pelted with tampons by her hooting, jeering cohort.
And then the shoe drops: De Palma, cunningly, has cottoned on to the true horror inherent in King's treatise being the see-sawing of expectations being requited and rebuffed. Initially, horror takes the backseat to satire, as De Palma gleefully lampoons the genre's objectification of female sexuality, and tacks on a deceptively savage incitement of the school system's inability to properly address bullying and mental health concerns (here, Betty Buckley expertly riddles her do-gooder teacher's kindly exchanges with Carrie with pedantic clumsiness and subtle resentment), while sprinkling in visits from Carrie's horrifically deranged mother (and the most distressingly leering Jesus on a crucifix in cinema history) so unhinged they can't help but ring grotesquely emotionally true. The social commentary is tempered somewhat by the slightly out-of-touch 'male writer hypothesizing what it's like to be a high school girl' (not helped by a cast nearly as visibly inappropriately old as Grease), but the cruelty rings hauntingly true.
But De Palma changes gears to to full-blown suspense building in the second act. Hardly subtle about his amorous Hitchcock influences (check out the sampling of Psycho's shrieking strings in Pino Donaggio's elegantly bombastic musical score), De Palma treats prom like Hitch's proverbial bomb on the bus - the anticipation, watching every last piece fastidiously click into place, is what makes it horrifying. With sadistic cheerfulness and perfectly steely, squirm-inducing pacing, he cross- cuts between Carrie, audaciously daring to hope she could still integrate with her peers at prom, and her classmates taking a late night jaunt to the slaughterhouse. It's almost unbearably cringe-worthy - pop culture infamy ensures we know exactly what the coup de grace is, but can't quite look away as it painstakingly runs its course. The final blowout itself - a maelstrom of dizzyingly circling cameras, whip- pan zooms, fast-forwards, and split-screens - toes the line of being distractingly stylized, but it's too guiltily, sordidly cathartic a payoff not to drink up. What we don't expect is a climax part II - even more distressingly batsh*t, as Carrie's mother requites the looming Psycho allusions before Carrie - literally - brings the house down. Tack on a jump scare coda that suggests De Palma, smirking, trying to outdo the heart palpitations from his buddy Steve's shark movie, and there's no question we've got a chilling classic on our hands.
Sissy Spacek is almost achingly perfect as the titular telekinetic, and there are few cinematic images that convey the writhing claustrophobia of adolescent isolation as her pitifully slumped, dishevelled form. Watching her painstakingly build nuggets of self-confidence, conceiving that her supernatural abilities could be miracles rather than satanic curses, to her beaming, tearful euphoria at being crowned prom queen, are almost too adorable to watch, making her descent into bug-eyed murderousness as heartbreaking as it is chilling. Piper Laurie unquestionably steals the show with a grotesquely fever-pitched tour-de-force as Carrie's fundamentalist mother, all the more titanically detestable upon realization that, idly humming while dragging and locking her daughter in a closet, she genuinely believes she's acting in Carrie's best interests. John Travolta and Nancy Allen are each deliciously awful as Carrie's malevolent bully and her dopey, sadistically eager boyfriend, their caustic banter as funny as the underlying abuse is unsettling, while Luke Skywalker-wannabe William Katt and Amy Irving are each understatedly earnest as the two sheepishly trying to redeem Carrie's year (the ambiguity of Katt's oscillating enthusiasm as Carrie's prom date remains one of the film's most enigmatic touches).
Carrie may verge on being overcooked at times, but its blend of visceral imagery, incisive social critique, and bonkers climactic payoff sear its place into the annals of horror history. So go ahead: take Carrie to the prom. You just might not be sorry that you did.
-9/10